Pacific

Medical students in Samoa complain they are not getting what they paid for

16:23 pm on 28 October 2002

Five students of the Oceania Univeristy of Medicine set up in Apia in Samoa a year ago are complaining that they're not getting the facilities they paid for.

In letter to the secretary to Cabinet, published in the Sunday Samoan, the students say the Medical School has failed to provide elementray resources.

The five students say they paid their fees in full and expected to get a high quality education in return.

But the letter says on their arrival rudimentary equipment such as a skeleton or a whiteboard were not available.

Within eight weeks they had lost the dean, a basic science lecturer who was replaced by an interim dean who could only teach physiology.

The students say in their letter that repeated requests to the University for their contract to be fulfilled have been ignored.