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Ryall Raves

When students took to the streets last year in order to win the Standard Tertiary Bursary from the Labour Government, the slogan was 'Too Little for Too Long'. Times have not changed.

It now looks as though we will get our first term's bursary payments, even though they will probably be a little late.

The immediate problem has disappeared, but in its wake remain several major long-term implications that are worth bearing in mind.

The STB was fought for long and hard so that students would be guaranteed a 'decent living wage' and would not have to rely on rich parents or extra employment in order to carry on full-time study. This latest incident has shown what a farce the STB has turned out to be.

If a factory employee's pay was held back for a month or two, he or she would take immediate steps through the appropriate industrial channels to have the matter put right.

That employee has a safeguard in an aware. The only protection students have is in a set of legally-drafted regulations, to which they can appeal if they feel they are being hard done-by.

At the moment there are no regulations. The Muldoon Government's style of rule is to issue a decree everytime a situation arises that it can't handle. Once the storm has settled down again, it's back to business as usual.

If students are serious in fighting for a 'decent living wage' then 'business as usual' is not good enough. We must demand immediate action on bursary regulations so that we have legal protection, as our first priority.

Secondly, we must thwart Muldoon's attempts to cut back our wages (as he has done to the First-year Training College students by denying them the 3.6% wage order increase) by pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments.

Finally, we must push for more regular payouts, so that we are not left in the position of near starvation before we are given cash to pay for all the necessary first-term expenditure.

John Ryall