Situation worsens at broke Technical University of Kenya

A year ago, the Auditor-General reached a finding on the state of the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) — it was “technically insolvent”.

As of June 30, 2014, current liabilities had reached Sh836.5 million and had exceeded current assets, which were Sh490 million.

This, he said, has resulted “into a negative working capital of Sh348 million. In particular, the university was unable to remit pension deductions amounting to Sh392 million as at 30 June 2014 to the Pension Scheme”.

Things have gotten worse, although the institution is abuzz with activities. Lecture halls, built to hold just a few technical students, are overflowing.

We found a lecture hall that was overflowing, and it was hard to tell who was attending the class and who was not.

It is also election time for student leadership and posters are splattered on the walls and trees.

Rusty furniture, strewn into some corners, untidy compound and a buzz of roaming students point to the major shift TUK has taken from a revered institution churning out the top brass in technology.

“This university used to be attractive to many of us, but now I don’t think anyone with an idea of what it has become would want to teach here,” a lecturer, who requested identity protection, told the Nation.

The institution once attractive to academicians in the technical field because of its facilities, is now a shadow of its former self.

Many of those inside are either on their exit or waiting for an opportunity to do so.

We met a lecturer who stopped working there last year over non-payment for part-time teaching.

“I have been taken round in circles and I have actually given up,” said the lecturer.

“My dues are pending for three years, yet they are telling me to come back and teach here.

“It is so bad and many of my colleagues have left. I feel like a stranger in a department I left only a year ago.”

Many others like him have moved to teach elsewhere, leaving TUK on a hiring spree amid the struggle to remain financially afloat.

More than Sh120 million is owed to the evening part-time lecturers alone.

Records show that by March 2016, about Sh7.8 million was owed to the employees who are supposed to be reimbursed 100 per cent of their spending on outpatient medical services.

NO PENSION
Most of the staff members fear getting sick for they are required to pay for outpatient services first and later claim from the university.

“What I don’t understand is that when we go for inpatient - where the University is supposed to pay 80 per cent while we pay the 20 per cent - they are very quick to deduct the 20 per cent even if they have your pending outpatient compensation,” a staff said.

“Show me one staff member who has been detained in hospital for lack of inpatient bills,” Dr Ramani asked us; arguing that these claims are malicious.

He said those decrying bad working conditions are bent on frustrating the University after they have failed to upgrade their education to match the new status of the institution.

We found Teresia Wairimu, who had to walk from Githurai to seek her pension.

“They have told me they don’t pay pension. I have been here since early last year when my husband was still alive and there has not been any help. Now 10 months since he died, I am still making this trip in vain. Please help me.”

A mother of two, Wairimu said she has met one social staff member willing to assist her get her husband’s retirement dues – and all she has been shown is a stack of files for similar cases and told to wait until the time she is called.

What she was not told was that the pension fund is headed for wind up and it is not clear when or whether beneficiaries like her will ever get the money that was saved to cater for their needs when their breadwinner passed on. Wairimu’s husband died on December 2015.

“It is not a malicious move to hold workers’ pension or fail to remit their savings but it is only that we happened to have fallen in this dire situation. Remember even the government stopped sponsoring Diploma students and we are funded the same way other universities are funded.

"It is not sustainable and unless we have the unit cost formula adopted, this scenario will be hard to escape," Dr Ramani told the Nation in an interview.

Efforts to get Education cabinet secretary Fred Matiang’i for an interview on the sorry state of the university were fruitless. Phone calls and text messages went unanswered.