About twenty students – mostly sub-Saharan – find themselves at an impasse in Tunisia. The Franco-Tunisian University for Africa and the Mediterranean, where they had come to study, finds itself subject to legal proceedings. Their classes are stopped and their future blocked at the same time.
While Tunis is about to wake up, they do not really have the heart to party. Silué Kassoum is Ivorian. After the first year of a Master’s degree at the Franco-Tunisian University for Africa and the Mediterranean (Uftam), he learned that the establishment was under legal proceedings.
His course and that of his comrades came to an end: “There is no question of having a hole in your school career because, for us, it is a hole. How will you be able to justify it during a job interview? We must do everything to make up for the year. We must save this year, we will never accept a blank year.”
Without residence permit
Like him, about twenty international students are in the same situation. Some have paid up to 3,000 euros to their establishment, but without proof of their registration, it is impossible for them to obtain a residence permit.
An impasse that is beginning to pose serious problems. “We are in a situation of illegality as we could not make our residence permits. And there is one of our colleagues, after having finished walking and on his way home who was taken to task by the police, recounts Silué Kassoum. Fortunately, we negotiated, we contacted the African associations and he ended up being released.”
Tired and worried, the group of students ended up alerting the Tunisian media of the impasse in which they find themselves. They were received Thursday, December 30 by the officials of their university who would have promised to do everything to find a solution.
