Government has increased its allocation to the University of Zambia (UNZA) to K230 million in the 2022 National Budget from K200 million received by the institution this year.
According to the 2022 National Budget Yellow Book, UNZA will receive a grant of K230, 328,480 from a total of K446 million set aside for grants to 8 public universities in the country.
Meanwhile, in a ministerial statement to parliament today, acting Minister of Education, Elvis Nkandu says government has released K48 million to UNZA management in order for it to immediately pay lecturers their outstanding gratuities.
Nkandu said that another K50 million will soon be disbursed to the university which will result in a total of K98 million.
In a Facebook post, Wednesday, UNZA Vice Chancellor, Professor Luke Mumba disclosed that the University of Zambia has been insolvent for the last 10 years due to underfunding from government.
The perennial underfunding is the main source of unza’s woes. There is a huge mismatch between our expenditure which is now around K 1.1 billion annually as compared to about K700 million in revenue,
Prof. Mumba said.
Unza’s statutory debt, debt to retirees and gratuities now stands at a colossal sum of K 9.5 billion.
Prof. Mumba revealed that this has forced management to raise 83 percent of money that goes towards payment of salaries from internally generated resources in order to supplement the 13 percent of funds that the university receives as government grant.
Paying salaries has not been an easy task for management at Unza. A survey of universities in the SADC region showed that we are the only country running public universities in such a manner,
he said.
Salaries in public universities in the SADC region are paid by governments on account that we offer a public good as public universities.