LUPANE State University (LSU) may have lost student results and financial statements following a disruption of internet services at its Bulawayo premises.
The internet loss clocked 11 days yesterday, resulting in employees failing to access online tools, emails, shared documents and access to the accounting system Sage Pastel.
Reports from the institution yesterday indicated that the internet disruption had resulted in revenue loss, failure to process examination results by departments and bringing operations at the university to a standstill.
Internal sources said on April 12 this year, the LSU 3rd floor premises at the CBZ Building in Bulawayo suffered a power outage after the institution exhausted its prepaid electricity. The internet router then reverted to the “Read Only” mode when power was restored.
“On Saturday, April 13, the vice-chancellor arrived at the Bulawayo office and realised that there was no internet and called the ICT director to resolve the problem, but he failed,” a source informed NewsDay.
“On April 15, the director asked graduate trainees (GTs) to attend to the problem as one of the chief technicians was on sick leave.
“In an attempt to configure the router, the GTs formatted the router to its original settings and erased all the commands. The university is at risk of having lost financial information and student results.”
The internet crisis at LSU premises in Bulawayo has reportedly also crippled the university’s Lupane campus since its servers are located in the offices where the problem emanated from.
- Revisiting Majaivana’s last show… ‘We made huge losses’
- Edutainment mix: The nexus of music and cultural identity
- ChiTown acting mayor blocks election
- Promoter Mdu 3D defends foreigners 30 minute set
Keep Reading
Employees are reportedly concerned that little seems to have been done so far about the challenge despite the university being highly dependent on the internet with the learning institution mainly conducting its meetings online, while students and lecturers depend on it for research.
Sources blamed the ICT director for acquiring obsolete equipment.
“When he assumed the directorship position, he hit the ground running by acquiring 300 refurbished desktop computers, Core i5 with 500GB hard drive, 8Gig RAM [Random Access Memory] which cost US$191,31 each, totalling US$66 001,95 from Qrent, trading as Innovent Zimbabwe with invoice number PFS23259 on December 11, 2023,” one staff member said.
“The used Core i5 machines have already reached their end of life. It would have been prudent for the university to acquire at least 150 brand new machines for that amount of money. Although it is evident that he has failed to discharge his duties, nothing has been done to him.”
The employees called on authorities to take decisive action against the director.
“Several employees have been reprimanded for lesser cases such as delayed responses which raises questions on treating employees equally,” said another staff member.
LSU director of marketing and Communications Densen Kulube declined to comment on the matter before disconnecting the call.
