University students furious as UMA fails to pay their internship allowances

A total of 3,491 students from over nine universities are left confused and disappointed after Uganda Manufacturing Association (UMA) failed to uphold its pledge of paying them a modest internship allowance of shs800,000 for each student.

These students from universities; Makerere, Kyambogo, Mubs ,Muni, Lira, Gulu, Busitema and Mbarara University were in the month of May invited by UMA to participate in the Higher Education Science and Technology (HEST) project that is sponsored by the African Development Bank (AFDB) together with Ministry Of Education and Sports. This project ran for four months with the main goal of improving skills for interns from different institutions of higher learning.

According to one of the participants who preferred anonymity, UMA in the beginning took them through a three days training session where they were  briefed on the guidelines of the projects and they were also promised allowances of shs 800,000 per intern that were meant to cater for their stay in field.

“We were all posted in different companies across the country and UMA promised to cater for our needs while in the field. We were meant to receive the allowances every end of month for the four months internship period. To our dismay, we have never received a single coin,” the disgruntled student revealed.

According to the student, thirty six thousand shillings (36,000\=) was to be channeled to their insurance while in field but “this money did not serve its purpose because most students especially those in the engineering departments were injured but they were not helped in any way even after notifying the project coordinators.”

When this  website contacted Mr. Mbabazi Hillary, the project coordinator for Kyambogo University and Mubs, he told us that they have not received money as yet from the African Development Bank, the lead sponsor.  He assured us that they are in the process of finalising the payments because the requisitions have reached the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Finance who has to approve this transaction.

“We understand the inconvenience those students are experiencing but we have not yet received the monies from the Bank as we are still running requisitions. There are also some audits that are going on in all those universities that participated in this project so as soon as all this is done those students will be paid,” Mr Mbabazi told this campus website.