The top management of Makerere Business School (MUBS) was tasked to explain the delays behind payment of allowances of students with disabilities and government sponsored students, arguing that the delays affected the students’ stay at the University.
According to the June 2022 Auditor General’s report, MUBS was meant to receive Shs104.621Bn, out of which, Shs92.165Bn was warranted, leaving a funding gap of Shs12.455Bn, a shortfall that saw the University fail to implement certain activities like payment of allowances to 34 persons with disabilities and 20 helpers to the disabled students.
Moses Muhwezi, Acting Principal at MUBS while appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to respond to the audit queries, explained that the PWDs were facilitated and this could have been proved if the auditors had cared to interview the students.
“Allowances for these persons were paid, to the respective persons and on time. Information is available for verification, perhaps if they had been interviewed, they would have said so. We recognise these people, they aren’t many, we have special privileges for them. You need to know we have interpreters, helpers for them, we have increased their rates, we have made the campus ready for disability in our own meagre resources, I think we shouldn’t create an impression that we haven’t cared for them,” explained Muhwezi.
The Auditor General also faulted The University for failure to pay 77 students out of the 1025 students on Government sponsored scholarship their living out allowances, a delay the University blamed on lack of national identity cards that makes it hard for the students to open up bank accounts, where the money is sent.
Muhwezi explained, “Seventy-seven students didn’t have their living out allowances but this is a challenge, students in University now never got their national identity cards, they were in school and without national identity cards, it is difficult to open a bank account for us to pass on the money to them. So, what we did, we asked National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to come to the institution, registered them and we were able to pay them now, but the challenge is as they come in.”
The Auditors also raised concern on the failure to award all the projected 300 best performing students as opposed to the 154 students recognised and all these were from two courses of Bachelors of Business Computing and Bachelors of Office and Information Management, saying failure to award students demoralizes students in other courses.
However, Muhwezi informed the Committee that although the University budgets to award 300 students every academic year who would have got first classes, in that particular academic year, only 154 students attained first class and those were the students awarded.
He said, “We plan for a number of students to get first class, these are the people to go on the Vice Chancellor’s list of Dean’s list. And if 154 get, then we give those who get, not everybody gets a first class, so these are the people we honour. We don’t stop at the best performing students, we also call the worst performing students and we counsel them and encourage them to work hard.”
