As students continue to decry surcharges, Kabale University has justified the late tuition payment surcharge of Shs50,000 imposed on students.
The institution, in defence, has stated that the surcharge is intended to ensure timely payment of tuition to enable it to efficiently run and hit its Non-Tax Revenue (NTR) targets.
Kabale University administrators submitted the defence as they appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to answer queries raised in the 2021 Auditor General’s report.
The Auditor General had noted in the 2021 report that Kabale University had registered a tuition deficit of about UGX3 billion.
Gad Twesigye, the University’s bursar said the failure to collect tuition from students was due to the second lockdown imposed by Government in June 2021.
Twesigye noted that Shs2.758Bn was collected from students after lockdown, and the remaining balance was for students who enrolled but dropped out.
However, Medard Sseggona, the committee’s Chairperson cautioned Kabale University on imposing fines on students saying they may create more drop outs.
“I am not very sure whether I take that position, I am in a very difficult position. On one hand I want to enforce NTR collections, on the other hand I have reservations about those penalties and fines because they may end up creating more dropouts. Someone fails to pay Shs1m and you tell them to pay Shs1.2million,” he said.
Most institutions of learning are imposing surcharges on students in form of late tuition payments.
Students have overtime decried these surcharges with the latest being Kyambogo University whose students are protesting both late payment and late registration fines.
