Parliament pushes university to address financial flaws

The struggle to clear arrears of RWF14 billion (US$15.6 million) has seen a number of development and renovation projects at the University of Rwanda (UR) stalled as members of the Senate, the country’s upper house of parliament, are pushing the institution’s management to undertake practical commitments to address financial flaws.

Appearing last week before the upper house of parliament, UR officials had to answer tough questions from senators on financial management and accountability of the institution, following financial concerns raised by the latest auditor general’s report.

According to that report, the university (which has never had an unqualified audit) has persistent financial problems which have negatively affected the university. The problems range from delayed or abandoned projects to contract management, accounting errors in financial statements and a failure to reconcile university bank accounts.

“The audit of the University of Rwanda identified cases of three contracts which were delayed and one abandoned project contract, with a total contract value worth RWF5.7 billion (US$6.4 million)” the report, which was released in June last year, said.

Stalled projects

The projects that have been stalled since 2015 include the renovation of the African Virtual University block which was providing ICT distance learning from the college of science and technology, and the construction of the veterinary building at the college of agriculture, animal sciences and veterinary medicine.

The university had also been expected to build a waste treatment plant at the same veterinary college and construct a classroom block at Rukara campus in the college of education, all in the Eastern province of the country.

The report, which had earlier been scrutinised by a parliamentary committee on public accounts in the lower house, had called on government to work closely with the university to address the identified challenges.

Senators interviewed by University World News said that as a vetting authority, it was in their interests to push for more accountability and clean auditing reports.

Ensuring compliance

Senator Jacqueline Muhongayire, chairperson of the senatorial committee in charge of economic development and finances, said that part of the committee mandate was to scrutinise how fundamental constitutional principles relating to social welfare were observed and how the university was working daily to ensure compliance with those principles.

“We wanted them to take some political responsibility through a number of commitments which will be assessed later as follow-up. We actually looked at how they present their financial statements, compliance, performance audits and how they observe previous auditor general’s recommendations,” she said.

The senator said that abandoned projects mentioned in the report have plunged the government into massive losses and that summoning the university was one of the measures aimed at getting the university to adopt practical measures to address challenges as early as possible.

Professor Nelson Ijumba, deputy vice-chancellor for academic affairs and research at the university, said the summons from the upper house of the parliament was a good opportunity to shed light on what has been transpiring, before the next auditor general’s report expected in June this year.

Commitments made

“We made a number of commitments after explaining the latest achievements from the auditor general’s report. I can tell you on record that, for example, the case of Rukara campus, which was raised earlier by the audit report as abandoned, has been completed and students are using it.

“With regard to the veterinary complex which was supposed to have been completed in the last four years, we have had to redesign the project since the previous contractor did not meet requirements. As of now, we have completed the new blueprint and construction has started and [been] conducted in phases, but we have got the finances now,” he said.

Ijumba said with regard to the US$15 million accumulated in debts, the debts were inherited from former and merged higher learning institutions, adding that many accrued from staff pension contributions which were not remitted in time and contractors’ payments which were yet to be disbursed.

He said they had support from the government to have the debts cleared.

“We are very much aware of the debts and we are being supported by the government to have them cleared in instalments.”