Over 500 Egerton University staff are facing unemployment after the university’s management issued a notice on the declaration of redundancies this week.
According to a circular by the learning institution, a meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday where the Vice Chancellor will disclose details of the redundancies.
Egerton University has been struggling financially with a debt of more than Kes 8 billion shillings for the last three years.
Further, Egerton is one of the worst hit out of the 30 public universities, as it pays its lecturers 57 per cent of their salaries; a move that has pushed the staff into numerous strikes in an attempt to push for full payment of their pay.
The notice was issued on February 23, 2023, sent out to all staff of the university, and notified the workers to attend a Vice Chancellor’s address on Tuesday, February 28; the agenda being to declare staff redundancies.
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However, on her part, Egerton University’s Academic Union Staff Association (UASU) officials Egerton Chapter, Secretary General Dr Grace has termed the notice a misguided move that will not solve the cash crunch the institution faces.
“We’ve seen this notice, this redundancy is ill-timed...others have taken early retirement, some left and therefore there is acute shortage of teaching staff, who are you retrenching? People have gone and the number has gone up….the redundancy is targeted,” she said.
The notice comes after the Ministry of Education officials, Vice Chancellors and funding board met in Mombasa for the first Biennial Universities Funding Conference where they proposed a raft of recommendations to bail out public universities that are sinking under debts and other problems
Egerton University Vice Chancellor Prof. Issac Kibwage was in attendance at the conference which sought to find solutions for pulling the institutions of higher learning out of the financial morass that has pushed them into pending bills amounting to Kes.60.8 billion as of February this year.
The raft of resolutions includes: writing off the Pending Pay As You Earn bill amounting to Kes.18 billion owed to KRA, and clearing the pending pension bill of Kes.19.6 billion in targeted instalments among others.
Additionally, the conference resolved that the Universities Act of 2012 be amended to have the role of appointing VCs handed over to the respective University Councils as opposed to the Public Service Commission.
The universities were also encouraged to lease campus spaces, grounds, and farms to raise rental income.
