Screening at NWU Vaal campus entrance gates becomes a nuisance for some

Some students and staff at NWU’s Vaal campus have expressed concern about the need for passengers to get out of their cars to be screened before being allowed to enter the campus. Sometimes this leads to long delays.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, all NWU campuses were shut down in accordance with government guidelines set by the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC). New measures were put into place regarding entering the university’s campuses. These regulations were to limit the number of people entering the campus and to combat the spread of the virus.

These measures include completing a pre-screening available on the official NWU website. This will give you a coloured token (red, orange or green) sent via email and SMS, that allows or denies entrance to the campus. A digital thermometer takes your temperature at the security checkpoint when arriving at the campus.

With the recent implementation of in-person classes, some of these measures have become a nuisance, according to some students and staff of the NWU. This is especially true when passengers need to exit the vehicle to enter campus through the pedestrian gates, resulting in traffic at the entrance.

Naomi du Plessis, a lecturer in communication on the Vaal campus, said, “passengers have to get out of the vehicle and  be screened individually as it is the standard procedure, and is something that we have to live with.”

Shaazia Tilly (19), a first-year BCom accounting student, said, “I think that it is too time-consuming as you have to sometimes wait for cars in front of you because their passengers need to get back into the car.”

Ella Firbank (23), a part-time lecturer in the faculty of economic and management sciences (FEMS), said, “there is no separate lane for those people with passengers in their vehicles which really infuriates me. It clogs up the traffic coming into the university, especially in the busy hours of the day.”

Christopher Motabogi, a corporate communications manager at NWU, said, “in order to curb the rapid spread of Covid-19, the NWU’s relevant structures, particularly the Covid-19 Response Task Team, will re-evaluate the current protocols. An extensive risks assessment exercise will be conducted.”