THE government has threatened to JAIL college and university principals who expel or prevent students from taking exams for failing to pay fees.

Tertiary Education Minister Stan Mudenge claimed the colleges and universities would be “violating the law” if they took the actions to force fees payment.

“Principals and Vice Chancellors must realise that they are violating the law and they will be thrown into jail or fired,” the minister told a graduation ceremony at the Harare Polytechnic last Friday. “I invite students or parents of students who claim to have suffered as a result of the universities expelling them to come forward with the evidence.

“It is government policy that no student will be expelled from college or prevented from writing exams for non-payment of fees.”

Mudenge says he is yet to come across any university or college student expelled over fees, or prevented from writing exams. Media reports claiming students were barred from campuses over fees were “based on a farrago of confusion which has created a phantasmagoria of conflicting images of dreamland on the mind of the public,” he said.