Public universities in South Sudan are expected to reopen after receiving funds for operational costs, an official said.
“This has been a long waited event and so it is a pleasure for us to clear out backlogs of accumulated admissions since 2013. This gives time to prioritize our missions and to achieve our goals,” said the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Yen Oral Lam Tut.
He said public universities would reopen in May.
“The main goal for the coming period will be targeting the best students and admit them in our public universities. This will help us maintain the quality of our national universities,” Tut said Monday.
He urged the government to build capacities of national universities to avoid sending students on scholarships to foreign countries.
“We have engaged a lot around the world looking for scholarships. This was because we were on pressure of backlog accumulated admissions. We now need to concentrate on our national universities to avoid sending students to study in foreign countries,” said Tut.
According to the minister, all public universities in the country were paid their operational costs for two months in the last two weeks.
“The University of Juba was getting a loan of 4 million [SSP] and the other universities were getting 3 million [SSP]. The contractors’ companies that have been feeding students have also been paid 10% of the money they wanted from the finance ministry,” said Tut.
“The money was wired to schools’ accounts last week,” he added.
This academic year, Tut disclosed, targets more than 9,000 students.
Meanwhile, two students received free packages at the launch of the academic year. The two are Michael Jada Daniel, a former student at Nile Model secondary and Tracy Gabriel Kenya from the Chinese Friendship secondary school.
Last month, a dispute over new fees structure imposed by public universities in the country led to the suspension of their reopening.
The five public universities are the University of Juba, Upper Nile University, the University of Bahr el Ghazal, Rumbek University and Dr. John Garang Memorial University of Science and Technology.