The Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) has criticised Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu’s remarks on the government’s cease to fund public universities and colleges.
Through its national leaders led by the union Secretary General Dr. Constantine Wesonga, the members have unanimously castigated the remarks citing it as a crisis in the education sector in the country that needs to be swiftly addressed.
“The funding of public universities has not been commensurate with the student population growth in the universities as demand has gone high with of over 145,000 admission of students annually. The Exponential growth in student numbers has put a heavy strain on facilities and human resource in the universities which has forced the institutions to deal with the crisis of demand for learning spaces as well as hire academic staff to cope with the higher number of students,” Wesonga claimed.
The union now says unless Machogu offers a detailed explanation of his remarks which based on their translation can be interpreted as a leeway having given universities free will to charge fees at a market rate from the current charges which stand at Sh16,000 with the financial situation of universities having now reached what he termed, a crisis level and eminent collapse.
The union said that the current funding by government is not proportional and is now calling on the CS to come clean on his utterances that the current financial crisis affecting the institutions called for alternative sources of income for the institutions to ease pressure on the government.
“The government has not been able to provide sufficient and adequate funds through capitation to enable the public universities respond to the high demands promptly and effectively forcing the universities to secure and offer many of their services on credit,” Wesonga observed.
Wesonga alluded that the government has not been able to fund tertiary education through capitation from the agreed 80 per cent lowering the funding to the current 46 per cent making public universities unable to meet their financial statutory obligations to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), National Security Fund (NSSF) and National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) on regular basis.
Wesonga said the university staff have grossly been affected by the current state of affairs resulting from the late remittances from the sponsoring institutions.
They have since asked the CS to analyse on the implications and to work in tandem with the President, whom they claim to have signed a charter with the committee including increase of vocational training institutions from 3 to 8 and the funding kitty.
