Makerere female students want TVs in their halls
A view of a section of the Mary Stuart Hall. PHOTO/FILE
Makerere University female students residing in the halls of residence have, through their leaders, asked the university management to provide them television sets to enable them watch the ongoing World Cup football tournament.
Makerere University has 11 halls of residence to accommodate a fraction of the more than 35,000 students at the institution.
Of these, only three (Africa, Complex and Mary Stuart) are for females and six are for males.
Dag Hammarskjold and Galloway halls are for post-graduate and medical students at Mulago.
Ms Hadijah Mutesi, former Makerere University guild representative for Africa Hall, and currently running for vice president of Uganda National Students Association (UNSA), voiced the grievances on behalf of her colleagues to the administrators.
“When the World Cup started, I received a lot of complaints from the girls asking me why they don’t have TVs in the halls of residence. We tried to reach out to the administrators, who told us Africa Hall had a television set but that it got [mechanical] issues that needed to be fixed,” she at a meeting at the university on Monday.
Ms Mutesi also decried the challenges that female students face when they go to watch the games in the males’ halls of residence.
“The males’ halls have television sets but the girls don’t want to go and watch with the boys because at times, the boys can be violent while watching the match. Others bully them,” she said.
For these reasons, she said the female students, some of whom are passionate football fans and players, remain caged in their halls as their male colleagues enjoy the games.
“We have girls in the football team, who would really wish to watch the World Cup matches in their halls. Why is it that all the males’ halls of residence have well-functioning TV sets and fully subscribed to Dstv but girls don’t have?”
Ms Margaret Nattabi, an aspiring guild council representative at Complex Hall, said the television issue has created a very big gap in the flow of information.
When contacted about the issue, Makerere University Vice Chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, said most of the students have their own television sets in their rooms, hence the reluctance to replace old television sets in the female halls of residence.
