400 Employees To Be Fired At Egerton University

By Nsunjo Erica

Egerton University council in a report has proposed to retrench over 400 members of staff to ease the payroll burden. “This will reduce the payroll cost by 38.7 million shillings per month,” says part of the report.

According to the reports, the annual payroll costs for the university are 464.4 million shillings per year and following the hardships brought by the pandemic, the University can no longer manage.

Egerton’s vice-chancellor Prof Rose Mwoya said last month that the university had requested the government to consider providing 589.7 million shillings to finance the exercise.

She said although the university has implemented strict austerity measures to cut costs, this comes as a last resort and its implementation is inevitable.

According to the report, the university has no source of funding except for students who are now out of session due to the Covid 19 pandemic following the closure of institutions.

The University report shows that regular students at Egerton pays only 16, 000 shillings per year in tuition fees which is not enough to cater to all the employed staff.

The report further states that government funding to the University has been shrinking since 2015, this explains why it is facing payroll burdens.

In the report, it is indicated that the university is only able to internally generate revenue when students are in session on campus and that since closure in March, it has been impossible to generate revenue.

The Universities Academic Staff Union Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga has written to the university demanding the payment of academic staff salaries as indicated in the 2017-2021 collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

According to Dr. Wasonga said, while the report plainly describes the financial challenges being faced by the university, it doesn’t show a way forward on payment of the balance of unpaid staff salaries.