Senate team unearths rot at Eldoret varsity

What you need to know:

  • Ethnicity, lack of office equipment, sabotage, poor communication and turf wars cited as the main problems.
  • Another difficulty cited was acute shortage of rooms for students.

Festering problems at the University of Eldoret have come to the fore after a Senate team started probing the chaos that rocked the institution recently.

The Senate’s Education committee visited the university on Friday and was informed of a mountain of problems bedevilling the institution.

Lack of office equipment for middle level managers, wanton sabotage, uncoordinated communication, ethnicity, turf wars, unclear job descriptions, accusations and counter-accusations on promotions, flawed recruitment processes and jumbled up structures were among the key issues raised.

The job hierarchy was also faulted for contributing to tension before the closure, with staff members who talked to the Senate team saying some of them had stagnated in one grade for years without promotion.

Some alleged that skewed promotions were the main problem, arguing that these were being done arbitrarily without following university rules.

Another difficulty cited was acute shortage of rooms for students within the university that was said to have forced more than two-third of the 13,000 learners to seek accommodation in surrounding estates.

The university can only accommodate less than 4,000 students, leaving the others to fight for space in private apartments that have cropped up in large numbers around.

Uasin Gishu Senator Isaac Melly has in recent weeks led protests against Vice-Chancellor Teresa Akenga for allegedly sidelining the Kalenjin community, which is dominant in the area.

The university has denied allegations of ethnic bias in recruitment and released statistics of academic and non-academic staff in a newspaper advertisement.

FACED RESISTANCE

During their recent visit to the institution, Vice-Chancellor Akenga told the committee of growing resistance against her since she joined the university in 2013.

She said she had done a lot to improve the learning environment over the past two years, despite not being warmly welcomed.

“I was told not to report here despite being competitively recruited,” she said.

In 2013, Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi had to intervene to enable the VC to assume office.

The committee talked to the university’s top management and the lower levels in its chase for the truth. It is expected to inform the House of its outcome next week.

Senators later heard that junior officers were sabotaging their bosses as per instructions “from above” and access to official communication was sometimes influenced by one’s ethnicity.

One top administrator said his boss was constantly communicating to him through his junior, making the working environment unbearable.

The committee chaired by Kirinyaga Senator Daniel Karaba began the investigation two weeks ago in a bid to unearth the root cause of the chaos — which turned violent and led to closure of the university — following a question by Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale.

During the visit, ethnicity came out as the biggest problem bedevilling the university, which was given a charter by President Mwai Kibaki shortly before he left office two years ago.

Before then it was a campus of Moi University majoring in science courses.

Some managers who talked to the committee described growing mistrust between employees mainly because of ethnic classification.