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SAITM students in fees dilemma: Minister says no more relief
The Higher Education Ministry has ruled out any further concessions or financial relief to SAITM students, despite the students’ appeals for intervention from both the President and the Ministry.
Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe told the Sunday Times that they had given the students a solution after much deliberation, debates and discussions and “they have to now deal with the Kotelawala Defence University authorities.”
The SAITM students’ biggest concern is the millions of rupees they are required to pay to the KDU, which has agreed to enroll them after continuous protests by state university students and the Government Medical Officers’s Association (GMOA) forced the closure of the private medical faculty at the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM). The fee amounts to Rs. 1.3 million a year and it applies even to those students who have paid their fees in full to SAITM. A SAITM Student Action Committee spokesperson told the Sunday Times that the KDU had told SAITM students’ parents that they would have to pay Rs. 600,000 within this week for their children to start lessons on August 7.
He said the committee had written to President Maithripala Sirisena, the Higher Education Minister, and the Defence Secretary requesting intervention and concessions in the matter.
When asked, Minister Rajapakshe said he had not received any such letter. “There is no point sending me letters now; KDU fees issues are an internal matter and should be taken up with them,” he said. The spokesperson said it would be unfair to expect the students who had already paid their fees to SAITM to pay once again a similar amount to the KDU. “Certainly, the scholarship students cannot afford this”
“However, we understand that the KDU has to incur a cost for allowing us to continue our education and its demand is reasonable,” the spokesperson said, adding that their problem was double payment and that was why they were seeking the President’s intervention.