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Rabat – Thousands of students from the Ecole Nationale des Sciences Appliquées (ENSA) staged a sit in on Saturday in front of the Parliament Building, in Rabat.
Somewhat alarmingly, this is the second national sit-in against “Polytechnic,” a decree released by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in August, aimed at integrating ENSA into other higher education institutions.
In an interview with Morocco World News, Aymane Boustani, a member of ENSA’s Kenitra commission said: “This sit-in follows a string of protests that started 40 days ago against the decree of the Ministry to incorporate the ENSA with the so-called ‘Polytechnic’ project.”
Boutani further said that “any decree intended to be released by the Ministry, should be endorsed and consulted with professors and students. However, the Ministry released the decree and consulted neither the professors nor the students.”
“At the beginning of the protests, the students called upon Lahcen Daoudi, the outgoing Minster of Higher Education and Scientific Research, to discuss the issue and to explain the Ministry’s reference of “Polytechnic,” however we realized that even the Minister does not understand it,” he added.
Boustani pointed out that ENSA students “are ready to escalate the pace of the protests and we have decided to keep boycotting the courses until the issue is resolved and our situation is settled.”
“The aim of the Ministry is to privatize engineering programs,” Boustani concluded.
