Kyambogo VC calls for extension of teachers’ registration

The Vice Chancellor of Kyambogo University, Prof Eli Katunguka, yesterday asked the Ministry of Education to extend the deadline for the ongoing registration and verification of teachers’ academic certificates across the country, saying the institution will not be able to verify the documents of all teachers in the stipulated period.
The Education ministry set December as the deadline for the exercise in both government and private schools across the country.
The move is intended to eliminate quacks and ghost teachers from the government payroll.
Addressing journalists at Kyambogo University yesterday, Prof Katunguka said they are overwhelmed with the number of teachers who are coming for verification of their academic documents.
The university has to verify the academic documents of all teachers across the country since it is in charge of all the primary and secondary teachers’ institutions in the country.
After having their documents verified, the teachers send their applications and verified documents on the Ministry of Education portal to be registered and confirmed.
“We shall not be able to verify the documents of all teachers in the next two months because there are very few staff who are supposed to handle huge numbers of teachers and we cannot recruit more staff due to budget constraints,” Prof Katunguka said.
“Whenever there is a new programme, the ministry says we should handle. This is not fair because we cannot run the university and other things. We are overwhelmed, thus the ministry should postpone the exercise to the next years to have all teachers verified,” he said.
Prof Katunguka said the university is not aware about the total number of teachers they are supposed to verify since there are very many teacher institutions.
The Instructor for Education and Training in the Ministry of Education, Dr Jane Egua Okou, said they have since received application of more than 100,000 teachers to be verified.
She, however, said the ministry has since rejected the application of 35,000 teachers who either had fake documents or errors on their documents.

Vandalism
Ms Okou said those who will not be registered will not be allowed to teach anywhere while those on government payroll will be deleted from the list.
Meanwhile, Prof Katunguka also decried vandalism of chairs and sanitary facilities by students who he said sell them as scrap.
Some students in different facilities are studying on the floor since the chairs cannot accommodate all the students.
Prof Katunguka said some students within university work with non-students where the former vandalise the chairs to get metals while the latter sell scrap to metal dealers.
To mitigate the vice, Prof Katunguka said the university has since recruited custodians to guard against theft of school property.
He said about two people were recently charged and sent to Luzira prison for vandalising the institution’s property.
“It is reported that one kilogramme of scrap metal around Banda costs Shs1,800 and I think this is what compels some bad elements within the university to vandalise chairs so that they can get quick money. Most of the chairs we bought have gone missing mysteriously. However, with deployment of custodians, we hope the vice will cease,” he said.
Prof Katunguka also said the African Development Bank has started bringing chairs to be used in the new buildings.