Parliament consulting AG on NRC’s exam results

The Parliamentary Committee on Education, Science and Human Resources is consulting the Attorney General on Natural Resources College’s (NRC) decision to withhold examination results of 14 final year students who were suspended, Weekend Nation has learnt.

In an interview on Thursday, the committee’s chairperson Frank Elias Viyazyi said they are consulting government’s top legal adviser on the issue because they feel the college is denying the students access to tertiary education and employment.

Viyazyi said the college is withholding the results because the students are considered suspended following the discharging of the High Court injunction they obtained stopping NRC from suspending them prior to the sitting of their final examinations.

“We have sent the legal opinion from NRC lawyers to lawyers at Parliament who have told us that we need to get advice from the Attorney General (AG). We are sending that opinion to the AG for advice.

“But as a committee, we feel the students are being denied access to education as some of them are failing to enroll at Mzuzu University because they don’t have results of their diploma examinations. It is a matter of constitutional right for these young people to access further education because NRC only offers diplomas,” said Viyazyi.

He said some of the students are suffering because they cannot get jobs without copies of their diploma certificates.

“The students who were suspended were all union leaders. Why should the college punish leaders of the students union when the union only represents views of the entire students’ community?

“Unions are acceptable in the country’s tertiary institutions and no one should be victimised for representing a group of fellow students,” said Viyazyi.

The 14 union members were suspended last year for allegedly inciting violence during NRC students’ protests against the college management’s decision to hike fees. The students later obtained an injunction stopping their expulsion.

According to a legal opinion from the college’s lawyers to Viyazyi’s committee, the injunction was discharged because the students failed to take substantive action to sustain the court order.

“We would like to advise that the concerned students obtained an order of injunction restraining the chairperson of the trust and the acting principal of the college from either expelling or suspending them from the college on 15 November 2012.

“The court ordered the students to take a substantive action within 14 days from the said 14 November 2012. As the students had failed to take a substantive action as ordered, the court discharged the order of injunction and dismissed the action on 15 May 2013 per the attached order hereto,” reads the legal opinion in part.