BLOCKED! But not silenced by UNISA
Unisa VC Puleng LenkaBula says she's busy and will not honour several requests for comment from ednews.africa on the current staff crisis which has claimed three lives.
Amid an ongoing staff crisis, which has claimed the lives of three employees and hospitalised many, the University of South Africa (Unisa) has blocked staff from accessing education news website www.ednews.africa.
Academics and staff at Unisa have been barred from accessing the site while on the Unisa WI-Fi amid allegations that the site was blocked after weekend reports on the deaths of three staff members who according to families succumbed to illness after their heavy workloads increased when the university scrapped the roles of 5000 markers.
Many staffers said yesterday they could not access the site at South Africa and Africa’s largest tertiary institution. Many employees have since the reports, afraid of losing their jobs, have come out to say they are being bullied, victimised and threatened for having an opinion different to that of the Vice-Chancellor Professor Puleng LenkaBula.
Two stories have been published in ednews.africa on the allegations brought by employees and questions on the allegation sent to Unisa for a response.
Contacted by ednews.africa, LenkaBula, said on Thursday morning she was busy and could not talk.
On Thursday Unisa staffers confirmed they cannot access ednews.africa which operates voluntarily without funding since 4 Feb and has gained 70 000 views.
The Unisa expose was one of the most read stories in this publication.
Our mission is to highlight inspiring stories and achievements in education, but we cannot ignore allegations of wrongdoing by those entrusted with leading institutions of learning, says editor Zingisa Mkhuma.
“We hope the leadership at Unisa will choose a less emotional way to handle our coverage of the crisis at the institution and engage with this publication so we can give our readers a balanced report on the unfolding events, that are detrimental to the services the institutions provide to learners.
“Dismissing our enquiries will not force us to ignore the calls from aggrieved Unisa staff members and we will keep publishing their stories while we will keep giving you an opportunity to respond in line with media law and ethics”.
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