Following an incident of stampeding at Capricorn College for TVET Polokwane Campus which resulted in two student hopefuls being rushed to hospital and five sustaining minor injuries this morning (Thursday), myriads of prospective students were forced to return to their respective homes after administration and registration was postponed to Monday.
Students started queuing at the institution from 18:00 on Wednesday with the hope of securing a space at the institution but were left disappointed after the announcement. Tumelo Morobe, Public Relations Officer at the college said the registration will take place at the new Peter Mokaba Stadium.
“There were more than 2 000 students at the College today (Thursday), which is overwhelming figure. Our campus is too small, we can’t accommodate everybody. There are long queues which have blocked the main roads leading to the campus, so we wanted a bigger place and Peter Mokaba Stadium was the ideal place,” Morobe said.
Prior to the announcement aspirant students who had gathered outside the gates lost patience and started throwing stones around the college and causing damage to a vehicle in the process. Candidates also forced the gates open but retreated when the Police and private security personnel made their presence known.
Department of Health Spokesperson Thabiso Teffo could not confirm the injuries but emphasised that ambulances are always on standby at various institutions of higher learning to attend to any emergencies. He said they deploy ambulances to institutions immediately when realising that there are long queues.
A number of Police vehicles and ambulances were spotted at the college but traffic officials were seemingly not available to control the high volume of traffic. Department of Transport and Community Safety Spokesperson, Matome Moremi said Polokwane Municipality was responsible to deploy traffic officials and pledged to liaise with the municipality. He, however, stated that if the municipality fails to deploy officers, the department does take the responsibility to ensure that there is a smooth flow of traffic at institutions of higher learning and reiterated provincial traffic officers were deployed to Mankweng to direct traffic at the University of Limpopo on Monday.
Polokwane Municipality communications team could not be reached for comment.
Story & photos:
Herbert Rachuene / herbert.observer@gmail.com
Endy Senyatsi / endy@observer.co.za
