VARSITY DONS OWED 3 MONTHS ALLOWANCES REFUSE TO SET END OF SEMESTER EXAMS!

Kyambogo University

Kyambogo University

Kyambogo University

END of semester exams at Kyambogo University are hanging in balance after staff refused to set exams.

New Vision has learnt that this has resulted from the failure by the university to pay staff their allowances for the last three months.

A head of department at the university New Vision talked to said most of the staff have declined to hand in the exams despite repeated reminders to do so.

“The university set the commencement date for exams for November 24. By now we should have finished typesetting some of them (exams). But this has not happened yet because staff have refused to set,” said a department head in the faculty of science, who preferred anonymity.

The development comes barely five days after twenty members of staff in department of languages and communication petitioned the university administration over the delayed payment of their allowances.

Some of the unpaid allowances include marking allowance, research, marking allowances among other allowances

The University’s Vice-chancellor, Prof. Elly Katunguka, said he has communicated to most of the staff about the cause of the delays and persuaded them to set the exams pending payment of their monies.

He said the delays were caused by a report by the Auditor General, John Muwanga, last month which queried the appointment of most of the staff at the university. The report also detailed a number of anomalies in finance and assets.

“As a result, the university has had to offer  all part-time and full time staff new appointment letters. This unfortunately delayed payments because information of all staff like numbers of period, salary scale and qualifications have had to be scrutinized by the appointments board,” he said.

“But we have identified sh3b for staff pay. We are going to pay them after receiving all payroll information from the heads of department,” he added.

However, Tuesday the staff and university administrators had not reached a consensus. New Vision has learnt that the sociology, Management and language department have refused to comply with the university request.

Daniel Ndawula, member of Kyambogo University Staff Association (KYUASA) said they have convened a general assembly tomorrow to communicate the outcome of the deliberations with the vice chancellor.

“We hope we will be able convince them. We don’t want to back to the chaos of strikes that have characterized this university in past.

Kyambogo employs about 1060 permanent staff and about 5,000 part-time and casual staff.