Cape Town - The University of Cape Town has made an undertaking to move away from outsourcing services on its campus and to find the additional funding needed to achieve this “somehow”, it said on Wednesday.
“Last night (Tuesday), we made a commitment to the principle of insourcing. A process to determine the modalities, framework and timeframes of the implementation of this decision will need to be agreed upon by all parties involved,” vice-chancellor Max Price said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Key points of the statement were released on the university's official twitter account and the student representative council welcomed the announcement.
“This decision assumes that we will have a commitment from staff and students that operations at the University of Cape Town will be allowed to return to full capacity,” Price added.
He said insourcing services would mean significantly highers costs, but the countrywide student protests against planned university fee increases had seen the university resolve to find a way to find the necessary funding.
“We are aware that insourcing will incur significant costs. The recent wave of student and worker protests at UCT and nationally - for lower fees and for insourcing workers - has emboldened us to commit to finding the money somehow. Across the institution there now appears to be widespread support for moving away from outsourcing.”
At the weekend, after the student movement forced a commitment from President Jacob Zuma last week that there would be no fee increases in 2016, an alliance of students and workers at UCT vowed to continue shutting down all operations at the university until the practice of outsourcing was ended.
At the moment, there are some 900 workers employed by service contractors at UCT.
According to estimates compiled in 2014, insourcing services would cost an additional R58 million a year, plus initial “upfront asset purchases” worth R68 million.
Outgoing SRC president Ramabina Mahapa said: “We welcome the decision, we as the SRC have been pushing that point so that we can resolve the impasse.”
UCT officially remains closed until coming Monday but the university's communications department said it did not know when it would reopen or when deferred examinations would be written.
These had been scheduled to take place from this week to mid November.
“This entire set of exams for 27 October — 13 November will be moved to a new date, which is as yet undetermined.” Mahapa said he was of the view that academic activity should resume as soon as possible because delaying examinations until next year would he hugely disruptive to many.
“We have international students who will run into visa complications. Delaying the exams into next year will not be of benefit to anybody.”
Mahapa said the student body was of the view that there were “many” other grievances that still needed to be resolved but since he was stepping down on Sunday it was up to the incoming leadership of the SRC to decide how to put across further demands.
African News Agency
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