In a meeting held Tuesday 14th March, the parliamentary committee on Education queried the Education Ministry over what they termed as ‘unbalanced’ supplementary funding amongst public universities in the country.
Hon. Peter Ogwang, the State Minister for education, while speaking at the meeting indicated that about UGX 44.873 billion had been spent under Education Skills Development and Sports sub-programme.
In a report presented, five Universities had benefited from part of the funds and these are Makerere University (8 billion), Mountains of the Moon University (5.9 billion), Ndejje University (3.8 billion), Kabale University (3.21 billion) and Mbarara University (1.66 billion).
Questioning the unbalanced funding which left some institutions uncovered, Philiphs Illukol – the Napore West County MP stated: “The Ministry is mandated to ensure that equal opportunities are given to all Ugandans in higher education. Should we assume that the budgets for universities in Northern and Eastern Uganda were enough that they did not need a supplementary?”
Stating his justification on the matter, Hon. Ogwang (education state-minister) explained that the Ministry of finance is responsible for funding and not the education ministry before adding that the education ministry itself has pending priorities financially.
He further asked the committee on education to influence the finance ministry to release timely supplementary funding for the universities.
