KAMPALA – Public Universities have called on Parliament to recommend to Government and have the Students feeding funds raised from Shs4000 to Shs10,000, saying the current fees are meagre and affecting running of their institutions.
The call was made by Kyambogo university Vice-Chancellor, Professor Elly Katunguka and the university secretary, Charles Okello who argued that the money paid by Government is too little for the Government sponsored students to have all the two meals, lunch and dinner, with the policy straining the institution’s budget.
Okello explained: “It has taken off but with pain when we recommended to this committee the other time we came, the committee had proposed at least shs10,000 per day and this committee should be able to recommend to Government how the general feeding is at the end of the day.”
The officials made the appeal while interacting with Parliament committee on Education where they had appeared to present the university’s budget framework paper for the financial year 2019/2020.
Okello told Committee that the issue of feeding of university students especially those under government sponsorship is a matter that needs to be sorted out once and for all for the betterment of students.
He added that following a meeting with the Minister of Education last year, it was decided that Universities stop being charging of student’s feeding but rather hire catering services which have since become policy for all public universities.
Kyambogo University Secretary also told Legislators that the institution has 2800 government sponsored students out of the 33,000 student population with the university left struggling to feed these on the Shs4000 allocated to each student per day, recommending to the committee to intervene and compel government to increase the funding from sh4000 per day to sh10, 000 for the three meals a day.
