With graduation close, it's anxiety and frustration at Makerere

The news that the online system of Makerere University is now operational after weeks of being off would have excited many students had its functionality been effective.

Makerere University took a bold step to close the online results system after it was hacked into.

As the graduation ceremony gets closer, some students at the university remain anxious and uncertain whether they will wear the coveted gown due to system failures that have led to cases of missing marks.

Daily, students trek from their places of residence to Makerere in a bid to chase for their marks before it is too late.

They are seen in a queuing up, waiting patiently to be worked on.

However, the system is slow as students are required to go through a bunch of files in order to find their marks.

Some students do not have marks; others have wrong registration numbers and courses to their names.

“As students, we have played our role of having full tuition paid, we have sat for exams and passed them and now we have to go hunting for our marks. Our marks are missing and we have been given wrong courses as well which is very frustrating," said Angella Kitozi a student of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University laments.

In partnership with the department of the academic registrar and the directorate of ICT has instituted a stop gap measure to enable students access their online results.

“Now given the fact that the other system was disabled, so we have now migrated from the disabled system in terms of ICT to this stop gap measure. There could be some errors or some mistakes” Ritah Namisango, the public relations officer of Makerere university noted.

She advised students to report to their respective college registrars to resolve these problems.

“Each college has a college registrar so we are advising the students to report the case to the college registrar.” Namisango advised.

Complaints regarding students’ marks do not come as a surprise as this has been the case on various occasions. But what remains unanswered is why this problem persists.