The government has developed a new stringent measure aimed at ending ghost learners across all the universities in the country.
The Cabinet meeting chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta approved the Universities (Amendment) Bill 2020 that will require all universities to submit a progress report for all learners.
"Every university shall submit a report to the Board by April 30 each year on the status of the beneficiaries of the funds apportioned to the university by the Board," the proposed law read in parts.
The new accountability measures will see the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) work together with the Universities Fund (UF) to ensure accountability amongst the universities' management.
Each university will submit a list of both self-sponsored and government-sponsored students to KUCCPS Board within 30 days from the date of the closure of the enrollment.
The report will enable the government to confirm who is benefitting from the funding allocated to schools specifically for students who are also allowed by the government to apply for Higher Education Loans.
The UF will also get more responsibility for managing the funding of higher learning students under the proposed law.
When the Bill becomes a law, it will affect universities which according to UF have in the past submitted an overall enrolment of students who were neither in school nor have prolonged their studies.
The report that was submitted by UF on February 12, 2021, indicated that there were more than 32,000 students receiving government funding and whose where about was not known or have overstayed in school.
The government also withheld Ksh5 billion meant for the said students pending the audit of the report submitted by public universities’ management until it was ascertained that those students had not found a way of manipulating the universities systems to prolong their studies.
Geoffrey Monari, the Chief Executive Officer at UF said that without a proper data system the government would be working blindly and losing funds meant to make education affordable to the bright and needy students.
“The data we are relying on have been generated manually and they could be inaccurate, and if public funds will be spent then we must be accurate on the numbers we are using to spend public resources,” Monari said.
