Three dropped from Kibaale Quota

Kyamanywa Julius
Three students have been dropped from the Kibaale district Quota list of this year's entry to public Universities. This was revealed on Sunday (07.0ctober) by the Kibaale district Vice Chairperson, Bizibu George William while addressing over two hundred students hailing from Kibaale district, at Makerere University

“We scrutinized the list and found out that three were not bonifide students of Kibaale. We wrote to the Ministry and we were told that the names were dropped", Bizibu said.

Mugaara Joseph, Mugarura Steven and Talemwa Ivan were dropped from the list but the ministry did not notify the district of the replacements that it made.

It is understandable that this years Quota admissions were marred by irregularities, which prompted the Ministry of Education to institute a committee that went through out the country verifying the names from the respective districts.

While responding to the students' plea for bursaries for the needy students at the University, Bizibu, who is the district secretary for Education, Health and Sanitation, said it is impossible at the moment since the district has meager finance resources because graduated tax, which was a major source of revenue for local governments, was scrapped off. He said the district now gets shs.110M monthly as unconditional grant, on which shs. 99M is used by the district to pay salaries for civil servants and the balance is used to run the day to day activities of the district. He however said the district gives assistance to University students offering Medicine, Doctorate and Engineering.

President Yoweri Museveni in the 2001 presidential election campaigns scrapped off Graduated tax, which was charged on all men above 18 years and working women.

In a related development, the Buyaga County Member of parliament, Barnabas Tinkasiimire promised to take a step in finding out whom the Education Ministry replaced with the fraudulent students they dropped.

“We can’t accept that loss, I will follow that matter. When the minister makes a statement, I will put him on spot to explain the replacements they made”, Tinkasiimire said.

Meanwhile, Barnabas unveiled his plans to stand for the second term for the Buyaga county seat in the year 2011 despite threats by some University students that they would come for the same seat.

“I have declared my intention to stand for my second and last term. I’m a product of competition and I’m welcoming competition”, he assured.

The government introduced the district Quota system in 2005 so as to cater for the imbalances in the public University entry. Students in “big” schools in the Central were taking most government scholarships and little was left for the countryside. Sixteen students were admitted from each district in the academic year 2005/2006, eleven per district in academic years 2006/07 and 2007/08.