UNZA IS IN BAD SHAPE AND NEEDS A DIFFERENT APPROACH (PART 2)
By Shalala Oliver Sepiso
In part 1, we discussed how the University of Zambia owed about K7 billion kwacha to various entities including statutory obligations debts to NAPSA of 3 billion kwacha for pension contributions (a thing which can affect future claims for its workers) and owing ZRA another 2 billion kwacha in unpaid taxes. We said the institution also owes for contributions to NHIMA, ZSIC Superannuation Fund and Workers Compensation Fund Control Board. Part of the debt, we said, was in form of penalties for defaulting in remittances. In that article, I didn’t address much how the government caused this problem by not remitting grants budgeted for and not paying its portions of the student bursaries for enrolled students from time to time. I also didn’t address poor and bad management practices at UNZA. I will address these later. For now my focus is to help the New Dawn Government see how it can be different from the previous governments and how it can make a change.
Today, let me pick up on the last article. I wrote this piece and the ones I will post soon over the last weekend as I was out of town working.
Firstly let me state that new information shows that UNZA owes in excess of K8.5 billion (approximately USD 500 million) in debt, in fact. Not the K7 billion kwacha I earlier reported. UNZA has been insolvent for decades and both internal and external audit reports will validate this point. UNZA has literally been running on borrowed monies from service providers and even its own employees (both retired and serving), banks, students, etc. This however is not sustainable and one day the institution will collapse. Had UNZA been a private company, it could have been liquidated by now.
Unfortunately, the 2022 and 2023 budgets do not address the reversal of UNZA’s challenges, which stem from decades of poor policies on higher education in this country. A number of areas that need addressing in terms of increased or enhanced funding haven’t been addressed. Even overall allocations in the two budgets haven’t shown a significant increase in budget allocation to UNZA by the New Dawn Government.
Despite UNZA being the only public university in the country which has a physical presence in all the 10 provinces of the country, it is getting a grant of K200m against an expenditure of K1.3 billion (as of 2021). The grant only covers about 15% of UNZA’s annual expenditure. The gap between the grants and UNZA expenditure is huge. The total income for UNZA as
as of 2021 is only K800 million inclusive of grants, fees from students and self generated income. This leaves deficit of K400 million/ year in Unza’s budget/annum.
The grant to UNZA was only increased by K15 million from K200 million in 2021 to K215 million in 2022. The monthly grant was K17 million per month in 2021 and it is now K19 million per month in 2022. Meanwhile the salary bill per month for UNZA is at K69 million. With the salary adjustments made in 2022, the wage bill is above K70 million per month. The means that the whole K15 million increment to the grant was swallowed by salary increments. What about increasing running costs? Honestly, how can UNZA be managed with such a deficit?
This means that the government grant is a drop in the ocean if UNZA is to be turned around. Of course the New Dawn Government cannot change in a jiffy the damage caused by UNIP, MMD and PF. But we need to start seeing some change in approach. Maybe a supplementary 2023 budget which is kind towards UNZA can be looked into. Or at least let 2024 budget be pro-UNZA. Otherwise we shall kill pubic Universities.
In the meantime, what needs addressing as low-hanging fruits are two issues: salaries for UNZA workers and accommodation for students’ accommodation.
The biggest challenge to successive administrations at UNZA (including the current one which was only appointed in May this year) is how to finance salaries for UNZA’s 800 full-time employees and about 200 part-timers. UNZA’s gross salary bill is at K69 million per month but what it can afford to pay is only the net at K42million per month. The shortfall (K27 million) accumulates into UNZA debt monthly and this has been going on for decades.
There is a misplaced thinking among technocrats and politicians alike in this country that UNZA should self-finance it’s budget at 100% including financing salaries from its own revenue. This is an impossible task given the current economic environment in the country but also the current structure of UNZA, which is geared towards, teaching and learning, research and community service and the quantum of investment to the institution. We have to remember that UNZA falls under the social sector just like the Ministry of Health. It is not there to generate profits. It provides a common good or a service to the country by developing specialised skilled human capital to develop this country. This task UNZA has performed and continues to perform without fail. Zambia doesn’t have a private sector huge and viable enough to finance Research and Development activities that can then fund UNZA’s budget.
In countries like Zimbabwe, salaries are fully paid by government including separation packages. This gives public universities a breather to deploy fees and other internal revenue towards running costs of the university, which in most cases should be three-folds the wage bill. Only, the UNIP government ran UNZA that way. Successive governments in this country have failed to appreciate and accept this logic. So you find that they keep changing managements thinking that by so doing they are going to solve UNZA’s problems. This is a wrong prescription for UNZA and when you give a patient a wrong prescription you are most likely going to kill that patient. This is what is happening to UNZA at the moment. The institution is in a comma.
The silence from UNZA on important national matters tells it all. This is very uncharacteristic of a university which is supposed to be the light of the nation. Everybody appears to have adopted a business as usual attitude, provided they can receive a salary at the end of the month. No one wants to rock the boat and show the importance of Zambian intelligentsia.
There is an urgent need to change the financing model and to restructure the University. UNZA also needs to start phasing out some old programmes and introducing demand-driven new courses. Additionally, there is urgent need to clear the huge historical debt referred to earlier.
In a related matter, the New Dawn Government should provide a separate grant to support research. This stopped in the 1980’s. Since then most of the research taking place at UNZA is externally funded. This is not the best scenario because, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’, meaning that not all the externally financed research might be useful to Zambia. As a country we need to finance our own strategic research for national development.
Government should depoliticise the university by removing partisan politics, which have polarised this strategic national institution. Politicians are financing rival political parties at UNZA and setting up political party branches. This was not the case even in the 1990s. This is very divisive and has destroyed the collegial and academic environment required in any university. The environment at UNZA is toxic. The problem of this partisan leaning is that it may end up bringing in victimisation and dismissals based on party affiliations. The ugly face of tribalism and nepotism can also appear at the national university since our national politics still have a tribal angle to them.
As a matter of policy, government should remove Labour Unions in public universities from among academic members of staff, which are also very political in nature, and replace them with Staff Associations. This is what obtains in many progressive universities. Only staff below the ranks of academic staff should belong to Labour Unions.
Which brings me to the last point for today. Government should invest in infrastructure modernisation and expansion. At UNZA, student accommodation remains a big challenge. Bed spaces have remained static for a long time at 3,900 bed spaces (combined UNZA GER Campus and Ridgeway Campus) from the time UNZA had about 4,000 students. About 20 years ago, the UNZA Senate delinked enrolments from number of bedspaces and this means UNZA students increased exponentially to the current number of students which stands at about 24,000 plus. The demand for university education increased several folds but without a corresponding increase in infrastructure. This means that less that 16% of the students have somewhere to sleep or live.
There was a project by the government to construct 26 (4-storey) blocks at UNZA with a total bedspace of 4,160. This stalled due to lack of finances and these buildings which are tantalisingly close to completion are still idle. There was also 4 hostels done by COJAR under the Ministry of Sports for the All Africa Games in 2011 which were also not completed. These were to provide another 640 bed-spaces. These structures give the New Dawn Government an opportunity to win public goodwill by completing them and giving students another 5000 bedspaces. The government doesn’t even have to finance this. It can simply allow private sector to invest the funds needed to complete the buildings and then run them under a PPP arrangement. With borders and roads benefiting from PPP, why not the education sector, which benefits mostly the poor and is a sure vote-winner for the UPND and the New Dawn Government.
Lets move!
I will end here for the day. Next time I will talk about the need for a substantive UNZA Council which has been missing for 7 years as well as issues of student loans.
May be an image of 2 people and people standing