By JASON SOM KAUT
The University of Technology Council has been accused of grossly understating its budget as advertised in the newspapers recently, with the intention to shift the blame elsewhere over Unitech’s financial woes.
The advertisements referred to concerns by staff and students as speculations appeared in the print media on Jan 11 from a press release by Minister for Higher Education Michael Ogio and Unitech Chancellor Philip Stagg.
A concerned parent in Lae, Bernard Herry made these allegations providing official budget documents to back his claims.
According to Mr Herry, figures advertised by the Council for 2005 – 2007 are less than those taken from extracts of the official Unitech budget as reported in the financial committees meeting of September 2007.
Figures show budgets of K35.9 million in 2005 while budget extracts record K40 million.
In 2006 advertised figures show K40.7 million, while budget documents show a figure of K51.3 million while for 2007 a figure of K49.9 million was advertised as opposed to K54.8 million as extracted from official documents.
“The minister and Government should act decisively to terminate those responsible for misleading them and the public,” Mr Herry said.
“Since 2005, the university budget had exceeded K40 million annually.
The budget council seems ‘realistic’ to manage the university,” he said.
He questioned the justification for the school fee increase that led to the student unrest and subsequent related criminal activities.
“The councils lack of justification was responsible for creating the unstable environment that led to the student unrest.
“They should be held responsible,” he said.
Mr Ogio as Higher Education Minister, had last year committed an extra K5 million to Unitech promising investigations into allegations of misappropriation when students raised concerns about problems facing Unitech including insufficient boarding areas and deteriorating facilities.
Mr Herry claimed that “…the official budget figure for 2007 as advertised had been deliberately deceiving because the much talked about K19.1 million rehabilitation grant was not included”.
He claimed an arbitrary amount was allocated for all departments and spending was on an ad-hoc basis affecting state of academic departments and research facilities.
He claimed further that the 2006 budget for academic departments was K2.9 million of which K1.5 million was for all 12 departments, K0.3 million for research/conference and K1.1 million for DODL, which had priority funding over the degree-awarding academic departments.
It is understood two new appointments had been made last year with another five this year.