The Kampala Central Member of Parliament (MP), Muhammad Nsereko has asked the government to assist 3,000 Makerere University students who are having issues with paying their tuition.
According to Nsereko, government should devise such means instead of reserving financial bailouts to only struggling businesses, as the students will be prevented from sitting for exams and graduating despite the fact that their parents or guardians are also taxpayers.
“We ask government to come out with a bailout, what we call an education rebate because the students’ loan scheme was suspended, but these are the people that have tried to pay for themselves and probably are failing in the 3rd or 4th year,” Nsereko said.
However, the Deputy Speaker, Thomas Tayebwa questioned how sustainable it is to bailout students facing financial distress at universities, saying that, although he understands the financial hardships the students face, government should handle the matter with caution.
“I know the hardships university students are going through, but I am fearing for the precedent we would set saying that when students fail to complete tuition, government should intervene,” Tayebwa noted.
The Deputy Speaker tasked Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja to study the matter with care and produce a detailed report.
According to Makerere University Students Policy 2016, a student who fails to pay fees within the stipulated period may apply for withdraw from the program and on resumption shall be required to pay all the requisite fees.
In a period between 2014 and 2016, the Makerere University financial statistics indicated that, 15,332 students out of the 37,101 students that had registered with the institution failed to pay tuition fees for both undergraduate and postgraduate students which caused the university a financial crisis that resulted into a sit-down strike by the teaching staff over non-salary payment.
