'Frustrated' MUK lecturer vanishes with exam results

Feb 01, 2017

In an email sent to New Vision, David Opiro intimates that he has withheld the scripts as the last resort to his troubles.

The police are looking for a Makerere University lecturer accused of withholding exam results of 122 final year Bachelor of Business Statistics students.

David Opiro, a lecturer of marketing principles course unit in the College of Business and Management Sciences, has declined to forward the marks to the academic registrar demanding salary arrears.

In a brief email to New Vision, Opiro intimated that he had withheld the scripts as the last resort to his troubles.

"The genesis of my issues which has made me hold marks dates back to 2013. I joined MUK in 2009 and appointed in 2010 September as a teaching assistant. I was denied promotion to the position of Assistant Lecturer discriminatively... I have the evidence," he wrote.

"I have been communicating with the university management since 2013 but no office wants to attend to me. I was informally deleted from the university payroll details. The university even gave me an expired contract and ignored the appeal i wrote to the appointment board regarding my appointments," Opiro added.

However, the officer in charge of the university police, Denis Kasibante, told New Vision that Opiro had been summoned over the issue, arguing that the students' marks were a property of the university.

By the time of writing this, Opiro had not honoured the summons and his known telephone number was off.

"Our officers are in the field. We will get him," Kasibante told New Vision.

Sunday Vision featured this exclusive story of missing marks in its 29th January 2017 edition.

Makerere University Vice Chancellor Prof. John Ddumba-Ssentamu has since suspended Dr James Wokadala, the head of the department where Opiro was teaching.

Wokadala heads the department of Planning and Applied Statistics at the School of Statistics and Planning. In his letter dated January 30, Ddumba states that Opiro was irregularly hired and given students' scripts.

According to the letter, Wakadala was summoned to the Appointments Board but failed to explain how Opiro was hired and given students scripts to assess.

"I have decided to suspend you immediately. Should you manage to retrieve the scripts from Mr. Opiro by mid-day, Thursday 2nd February 2017 and bring them to my office, this suspension will be accordingly lifted," Ddumba writes.

Wokadala was ordered to hand over office to the Dean, School of Statistics and Planning by 5.00 pm on January 30, 2017 without fail.

According to the directive, the students will sit for another exam that will be marked on the same day, in the event that their scripts are not recovered in time.

"In the event that scripts and marks are not recovered, the affected students shall be given a special examination on Friday, February 2017 which will be marked on the same day to enable the students graduate on time," Ddumba states in the letter.

 

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