By Our Reporters
Uniting under Muasa, Makerere academic staff members have written to Education Minister Janet Museveni calling for disbandment of the governing council whose members they say are obscurantist and they have lost confidence in them. The academic staff also say the caliber of the membership for the council is wanting, as was highlighted in the Rwandeire Visitation Committee report, which further justifies their demand for more prolific membership. In an interview with Mulengera news website, Muasa chairman Dr. Deus Kamunyu said: “There is a lot that can be done to improve the profile of our governing council even before we begin talking of the need to amend the law. Have you bothered to know the caliber of people for instance on the Nkozi University governing council? We caneven within the current legal framework set a standard and say KCCA please send us a representative who meets the following profile.” Led by their Chairman Dr. Deus Kamunyu, the Makerere academic staff (Muasa) members late last week held a general assembly meeting and voted for the expulsion of Council members led by their outgoing Chairman Wana Etyem whose term ends December this year. “We don’t want any of the current members returned even when the new council is being constituted,” says the Muasa boss referring to rumors that some of the incumbent members are already lobbying for re-appointment. Kamunyu, who has previously been threatened with severe sanctions for standing up to Council and management bosses, told this news website that Minister Janet has up to 28th September to act as asked or else the academic staff will resort to extreme measures to draw countrywide attention to their grievances. Kamunyu was reluctant to disclose what they will do after 28th September but it will most likely be the usual act of laying down tools. Saying they are tired of “career council members who don’t do anything else apart from surviving on council-related deals,” Kamunyu said it doesn’t matter whether staff demanding expulsion of council is unprecedented or not. “We can make history and don’t ask me whether this has ever happened or not. We have grievances and we have a right to demand that our line minister acts.”It will be recalled that on the eve of ex-VC Baryamureeba’s ascendance, Muasa members then led by Odoi Tanga passed a vote of no confidence against then VC Prof Livingstone Luboobi and this complicated efforts by council to re-appoint him and also expedited his exit from the office.
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Kamunyu adds that during the general assembly meeting, members explicitly expressed bitterness as to why Council merely looks on when the Appointments Board members usurp the professional powers of the HR Directorate, an anomaly they said had resulted into big men’s relatives and cronies being recruited to juicy positions at the expense of the more qualified employees. Kamunyu says the ever increasing number of aggrieved employees challenging Appointments Board decisions in the Staff Appeals Tribunal and Courts of Law is indicative of the extent to which things have gone wrong. Indeed in a recent letter, Mr. David Makumbi writing on behalf of the IGG Irene Mulyagonja notified the Vice Chancellor Barnabas Nawangwe that investigations into some of the most recent staff recruitment decisions had commenced and asked him to prepare to cooperate with IG investigators led by Ms Gloria Aleesi Nalule. The IGG also asks Nawangwe to ensure all the other officers serving under him equally cooperate with investigators. Five days later, Nawangwe replied showing readiness to fully cooperate and share all the information the IG investigators will require from time to time. In the same vein, Nawangwe orders new HR Director Adnrew Abunyangu to prepare all the necessary correspondences on top of ensuring whoever the IGG will wish to interact with is readily available to aid the investigations. Kamunyu says the other concerns academic staff have relate to failure by management to equally share the billions annually collected in internally-generated funds. On the issue of alleged employment of relatives at Makerere, a concerned official urged Dr. Deus Kamunyu to tread carefully “because he too was recruited at Makerere at a time his man Prof Nyakana was on the appointments board; this was after Prof Balunywa disgracefully expelled him from Mubs for similar cantankerous character of inciting others into defiance activities against Mubs management.”
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We several times rang Council chairman Eng Wana Etyem for his comment but we never succeeded getting him take our calls. But a top University official close to him offered to give context to what is brewing at Makerere. This official preferred to speakon strict condition of anonymity. The official is close to Wana Etyem and is influential in both Council and Management. “Those teaching staff members aren’t acting in good faith especially their chairman Deus Kamunyu Muhwezi. He has vendetta against [Physics department’s) Dr. Wilson Tumps Ireeta and Dr. Sarah Ssali who are Muasa’s elected representatives in Council yet unfortunately those are the only council members the Muasa constituency has control over and can recall. Kamunyu isn’t smart and in the general assembly he tried that idea and it was rejected and he is now unleashing his anger on the entire council,” the official furiously said. “I will by the way be surprised if council ever responds to that nonsense because that Muasa isn’t legally recognized. It’s a mere association and not a union. So how does council legitimize such by replying to them? That so-called general assembly even had procedural problems. They had 78 people in attendance and majority weren’t enthusiastic about that resolution and Dr. Kamunyu fully knows it.” The official then proceeded to reveal why Kamunyu and others are up in arms against council. “There are two ring leaders of that resolution and these are Dr. Muganga and Dr. John Mushomi. The duo has vendetta against council. They led others to petition council against Dr. Wamala their dean at the school of statistics. Council got the petition and subjected it to scrutiny through the Directorate of Legal. They studied the signatures and found it was problematic. They wrote letters calling petiotioners one by one to come and corroborate their signatures and they didn’t show up. Instead the chief petitioners started saying council is too weak,” the official told this news website in a phone call. “But the most important issue against council generally among academic staff is related to double employment which management abolished sometime back. That is why Dr. Kamunyu can’t get the non-teaching staff on board regarding this issue because they are unconcerned. Management through the University Secretary came up with a letter showing this wouldn’t be accepted. The Vice Chancellor followed it up by sternly warning them that now that salary enhancement has been granted we shall have to work for the money we are going to be paid.” The official gave examples of some of the academic staff members that have since been deflated as a result of the new policy prohibiting double employment. Dr. Richard Tweragize (of Statistics) recently had to choose between Makerere and Marie Stoppes Uganda after it emerged he has a full time engagement at the latter. For earning Shs15m per month as Director ICT at Finance Trust Bank, Dr. Richard Kisule had to forfeit an equally juicy position at Makerere’s College of Computing. “It’s a very serious matter and a long list has been drawn up. It’s a big problem in the medical school Mulago whose academic staff are being investigated for moonlighting at KIU and St. Augustine University. Can you imagine those people even sneak in St. Augustine students to do medicine exams using Makerere facilities in Mulago? They are panicking because we are leaving no stone unturned. That is why they are ganging up to intimidate management and council. We have people like Dr. Johnson Tumwebaze, Dr. Odrek Mirembe and Dr. John Ngubiri working as Deans at UTAMU which is clearly a full time job and yet they continue to be on the Makerere payroll.”
Besides St. Augustine University and KIU, the other Universities encroaching on Makerere’s teaching staff are UCU and Catholic Church-owned Kisubi University which ex-VC Prof Ddumba-Sentamu will soon be heading as VC. Kamunyu says council shouldn’t be escapist and the chairman’s Shs3m monthly retainer, which they are questioning, has nothing to do with the alleged double employment. He didn’t respond to claims by the above anonymous official that a significant number of Makerere dons had resorted to delegating their teaching lots to their PhD students “as they give much of their prime time to other Universities.” Kamunyu maintains “we won’t be blackmailed by such talk and it remains our demand that council remains a place of honor comprising of only honorable men and women and not fortune-hunters who have failed to survive elsewhere.” He says Muasa representatives Sarah Ssali and Ireeta have become unpopular in Muasa because of their indifference towards staff welfare-related concerns. “I’m not the one fighting them. It’s their actions and we even invited them but they didn’t attend our general assembly meetings yet that is where they are supposed to get views to represent.” He refutes claims that a small clique sat and made anti-council resolutions which lack legitimacy among the broader Muasa membership. He says Muasa requires only 30 members to sit and make binding decisions, a number that was clearly exceeded at the meetings in question. He says their conclusion that the current council doesn’t measure up derives from the Rwandeire Committee Report which made this stinking indictment on pages 39-47.For comments, reach us on 0703164755.
