UKZN study place poser
Someone must take responsibility for M4
BRIBERY and corruption have long been suspected in the allocation of study places at UKZN’S Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine and allied health faculties, including pharmacy, optometry and audiology.
The Sunday Tribune’s exclusive front-page article headlined “UKZN syndicate bust” on May 14, which reported on the alleged complicity of Varsha and Hiteshkumar Bhatt, the owners of the world-famous Little Gujarat restaurant, and Preshni Hiramun, a former Chatsworth school teacher, pointing to them possibly masterminding the process, was a shocking revelation.
Bribery amounts varied between R500 000 for medicine and R250 000 for pharmacy. While the lowest weighted academic average accepted for the intake of Indian students was 90.86% (a minimum mandatory admission UKZN policy requirement), such places were offered by Hiramun to undeserving Indian students who had a matric pass rate of 80%.
On top of this, the sale of certain health science examination papers for R30000 simply adds salt to the seeping wounds of an ailing system.
The competency levels of UKZN doctors/pharmacists becomes questionable and the lives and health of many have been or may be compromised.
The far-reaching implications and consequences of their dodgy deals are many and multi-faceted.
This trio must have acted in concert with certain UKZN officials (administration or otherwise).
Corrupt UKZN officials must be identified, vilified and sanctioned without mercy.
It is no stretch of the imagination to venture that the career aspirations of many deserving and hard-working students were thwarted because of the greed and selfish acts of corrupt individuals.
In all probability, their parents could not afford to pay the astronomical fees to enable them to study abroad.
Why would the owners of the Little Gujarat restaurant, a worldfamous eatery, have to resort to such greed?
Did God forsake them and all others implicated, or did they forsake God? Now, in their hour of need, who will they turn to?
GONA GOVENDER La Mercy
IT SEEMS strange that the buck is passed to KZN Roads regarding the deplorable overgrown vegetation on the M4.
The province maintains only a certain section and the worst part is from the the La Lucia on-ramp towards Durban and alongside the hypermarket on both sides of the fence. This is the duty of ethekwini, but not even one person has been bothered to get a team and clean up the road.
While many may criticise the ratepayers of richer areas; it seems and comes as no surprise that many well-heeled areas have Urban Improvement Precincts (UIPS).
To me this is nothing more than a message of municipal failure and locals have to take charge and fix things up at their cost. A double and treble cost. The umhlanga promenade is superbly managed.
Income taxes, fuels and booze levies, municipal rates and now UIP levies. So what is Council doing? See the racial profile of these UIPS and tell me this is racist and must be scrapped, and then watch these areas fall apart.
Why do we need UIPS when Council should be doing this in the first place.
With the recent WEF, the M4 road must have been a super joke if I was a visiting delegate. It seems fortunes can be spent on useless talk shops, but your city’s main corridor is a first class mess.
Get your priorities right and the investors will roll in.
Ethekwini has something like 27 000 full time employees on its payroll plus all the sub-contractors.
It’s high time someone gets their butt off their royal chairs, drives the M4 and gets a team to clear the verges from the Umgeni River right up to Umhlanga and on both sides of the road and does so every six months. MUHAMMAD OMAR
Durban North