BY TALLA AGHAA CHRISTOPHER
The graduation ceremony o f the pioneer batch of the 1st and 2nd cycle of the Higher Technical Teacher’s Training College, HTTTC Kumba has been announced for June 2, 2017. The graduation ceremony which has already been classified as ground breaking shall be presided over by the Minister of Higher Education, Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo.
It should be recalled that HTTTC was created by a Presidential decree No 2014/090 of 7th March,2014, attached to the University of Buea, with 14 departments barely two weeks after the celebration of the golden jubilee of the reunification of Cameroon in Buea.
The Pioneer Director of the College, Joyce Bayande Endeley, Professor of Agricultural Extension Education was installed at the Dorothy Limunga Njeuma Amphitheatre of Wednesday June 11, 2014.The current Director of the College Professor Roland Ntui,is seriously burning midnight candle to ensure that the ceremony registers a huge success.
The excitement amongst the graduating students cannot be overemphsized since they have been anxiously waiting for a date to be announced. The students had rounded up their training about 8 months ago and their peers in similar colleges in different towns had long graduated, integrated into the public service and posted already.
THE SUN gathered that the graduation ceremony of the pioneer batch of about 500 students will culminate in the reading of a Press Release to be endorsed by the Minister of Secondary Education bearing on the integration in to the Public Service and posting of the various teachers to their various schools. This ceremony, THE SUN gathered, is coming against the backdrop of a rumoured strike action by the graduating student in a bid to express their frustration and to decry the maltreatment they are receiving from the authorities in Yaounde.
The students are reported to have complained about the fact that they are still to be handed their certificate and posting while their counterparts in the other Higher Teachers Training Colleges like ENS Bambili, Maroua, Yaounde and HTTTC Bamenda and Douala have already graduated.
Another frustration expressed by the students is that,even before the official date for the graduation ceremony was announced, the students were ‘forced’ to pay in the FCFA 30,000 for their graduation robes. However, when THE SUN visited the administrative block of the College at Buea Road Kumba, a Press Release endorsed by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea Professor Nalova Lyonga announcing the date of the graduation with three optional conditions to be fulfilled by the graduation students; the communiqué gave the students the choice to either pay FCFA 30,000 to own a graduation robe from the school, or pay FCFA 5000 to hire one from the college and pay a refundable deposit of FCFA 21,000 and above all choose to attend the ceremony or not and collect their certificate later.
The communiqué equally debunked corruption allegations in the college as insinuated by some of the disgruntled graduation students and warned that the University of Buea doesn’t associate herself with corrupt practices.