Makerere university administrators have been ordered by President Museveni to suspend the new policy of 10 percent fees increment.
The President revealed the directives during a meeting with Makerere university administrators led by the Vice Chancellor, Prof Ddumba-Sentamu and Guild leaders headed by Ivan Bwowe (Guild President) on 21 August 2014.
Makerere university students received the information cheerfully attributing the achievement to a number of strikes in the last few months at the oldest public university.
The strikes were aimed at forcing the university administrators to revise the new fees policy (10% fees increment to all new students of 2014/15 Academic year)
Here are the details of the meeting as posted on President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s facebook page: He writes;
Today I held a meeting with administrators and student leaders of Makerere University and directed the university to suspend the 10% increment on tuition for new students. Government will meet the cost of the increment this academic year.
Private students do not have to pay salaries for professors and lecturers. They should be paying the unit cost of their education and utilities like electricity and water.
I have, therefore, directed the University administration to compute the unit cost of educating a student excluding salaries.
Government will take up payment of teaching staff salaries and increase the salaries and wages’ allocation to public universities to Ugshs 300 billion next financial year. This will take the burden of paying teaching staff away from private students.
The centrepiece for a quality university for our children are good teachers, professors and lecturers who are not running around teaching here and there. We must work out a formula to retain our professors that includes attractive remuneration. I will meet Makerere University officials again after one month.
