Multimedia University keeps dons unpaid for upto 5 years

Multimedia University of Kenya entrance. PHOTO | COURTESY

Multimedia University of Kenya is asking unpaid lecturers to swap debts of millions of shillings in salary arrears — some running as far back as five years — with school fees of their kin at the institution, amid a biting cash crunch threatening to ground the institution’s operations.

The Business Daily has established that the cash-strapped university has entered a deal with a section of its lecturers who are pursuing higher qualifications at the institution or have dependants at the institution to net off their salary arrears with fees due.

In cases where the university owes lecturers even after netting off arrears against fees due, the institution delays paying the balances with the teaching staff forced to wait for more than a year.

The institution, like the majority of public universities, is struggling to fund daily operations amid a significant drop in students taking parallel degree programmes and delays in cash disbursements from the National Treasury.

“The university comes up with a deal where if you as a lecturer pursuing a higher qualification here or you have a dependant here, then they net off the salary arrears against the fees you are supposed to pay,” a lecturer told Business Daily.

“If then after the net-off, they still owe you then they will write a cheque but it takes a long time before you get the money.”

But lecturers who are not pursuing higher studies and without dependants at the university are left out in the cold and forced to wait for years to get paid. Some give up after waiting for years amid allegations that staff in the finance department demand kick-backs to speed up clearance of the arrears.

A lecturer who has since left the university due to payment frustrations says had to give up an estimated Sh1 million in salaries arrears for the two years of teaching.

“I taught several units at the university between 2017 and 2019 but I had to stop because I was not getting paid,” the lecturer said.

“For a unit where the contract said that I should be paid Sh50,000, the university paid me Sh35,000. For all my work I only got paid Sh70,000 and left more than Sh1 million. I gave up following up on the money.”

Business Daily could not get an official comment from the university while employees at the Vice Chancellor’s office also declined to comment. “The university has departments that deal with specific matters. I am also not in a position to know the issues raised,” said a university employee working in the Vice-Chancellor’s office.

Salaries for full-time lecturers remain unclear, part-time lecturers teaching undergraduate courses get between Sh110,000 to Sh180, 000 per unit. Those teaching certificate courses get an average of Sh50,000 per unit. But the agreement between the institution and lecturers is likely to cause uproar over possible breaches of Kenyan labour laws.

Multimedia University has since the 2017/18 financial year received Sh2.91 billion as State capitation for government-sponsored students.

Capitation funding to the Ongata Rongai-based institution has grown from Sh415.9 million in 2017 to Sh711.42 million in the financial year ending this June but has not matched the increase in student numbers.

But like other public universities, the Treasury has over the years delayed State capitation besides a drop in enrolment for the parallel degree courses, piling financial pressure on the institutions.

Construction of a Sh646 million library that had stalled is nearing completion, raising questions about channelling the limited funds to non-priority.

A report tabled in Parliament shows that the project, fully funded by the Treasury, was earmarked for completion in the 2021/22 financial year had been delayed.

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