Open Kyambogo Varsity, Orders Museveni

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has directed the education and sports ministry to ensure that Kyambogo University is established this October, reports John Odyek and Anthony Mugeere. In a speech read for him by the State minister for higher education Mrs. Betty Akech (pictured right), Museveni said the Government is committed to establishing the university to enhance its policy of supplying human resources at all levels of education. Akech presided over the 7th graduation ceremony of the Uganda Polytechnic Kyambogo (UPK) yesterday. A total of 862 graduands, 118 of whom were female, received certificates and diplomas in various fields. The Kyambogo University will be born out of a merger of the Institute of Teacher Education Kyambogo (ITEK), the Uganda National Institute for Special Education (UNISE) and UPK. Museveni urged the ministry to forward the financial implications of cost-sharing to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development for incorporation into the 2001/02 financial year budget. "The Ministry of Education and Sports should give guidance as to the unit costs of training in the various tertiary institutions so that grants disbursed to the institutions correspond to enrollments. We need to look at possibilities of divesting from non-instructional expenditures and propose to consumers options available for optimal utilisation of the available facilities," Museveni said. Museveni scrapped cost-sharing in tertiary institutions in February during an address to the nation from Moroto. This was shortly after the UPK students had gone on a three-day strike over the levy of sh300,000 for meals and other requirements. Ends