Delayed pay – How do private university lecturers cope?

Lecturers offering courses in various private universities across Rwanda are concerned over delayed payment of their salaries, saying it affects their lives and the way courses are dispensed. Some of them have turned to the courts to resolve the situation.

University World News has established that the delays in the payment of both academic and administrative staff are common, the only difference being the length of time for which employees go unpaid.

For instance, at the University of Kibungo (UNIK) based in Ngoma district in Eastern Province, some lecturers last received their salaries in August last year, while at the Christian University of Rwanda, which has about 2,000 students in colleges in Kigali city and in Karongi district in Western Province, some lecturers say they have been without pay for eight months.

Very few universities can pay regularly.

“It is a serious problem. I have not been paid for the last eight months and I have no hope to receive any payment soon as the university management has turned a deaf ear to our queries,” said a journalism lecturer at the Christian University of Rwanda who requested anonymity.

He said the university owes him RWF3.5 million (about US$3,900).

“We need to pay for rent, buy food and other basic needs such as transport, but this is hard for us because of rampant salary delays,” he said.

The university started in 2016, and in less than three years there are members of the staff the university has not been paid for over a year.

Teaching quality

“We can’t teach properly as we are not motivated; life is complicated because we are not paid; quality of education is being affected as well,” said another lecturer.

A lecturer at UNIK, formerly known as the Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Education of Kibungo, said she was last paid in August last year.

“The university owes me 10 months’ [salary] in total and I am struggling to survive. I am deeply indebted to many people and I don’t know how I will clear the debts I am still accumulating,” she said.

She said the university has crafted a strategy to give transport to lecturers so that they can keep teaching. Everyone gets RWF10,000 (US$11) per week for transport, which does not cover the full cost of transport.

“Some decide to use it to buy a little food and come to work once a week … you see how this affects the quality of education,” she said.

“It is a challenge. The private universities belong to no trade union and the Ministry of Education does not intervene apart from advising the universities. Only courts can help,” said the lecturer who said her dossier is in the Ngoma-based court.

According to university officials, the number of students at UNIK has declined from 4,400 in 2014 to 1,200 on both its campuses.

University World News has also learnt that UNIK is proposing to pay staff as soon as possible, but only 75% of their monthly salaries, and without any arrears.

“Instead of paying us the arrears, the university wants to cut our salaries and borrow 25% of our salaries,” one of the employees said.

Students – ‘Abandoned sheep’

Students from the universities concerned say that they are negatively affected by delayed payments.

“It is like students are abandoned sheep,” said one student at the Christian University of Rwanda. “Like the finalists who are working on projects, nothing has been done so far in supervision. We are not sure that we will graduate on time,” he said.

Professor Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, the owner of the Christian University of Rwanda, said the university is faced with “imbalances” between expenses and income.

“We have been experiencing imbalances between expenses and the income we generate from tuition fees, which is a serious challenge for us,” he said.

He said 60% of the 2,000 students at the university regularly pay their tuition fees, which are RWF400,000 per year. He said the university employs over 60 members of staff and it is required to pay them at least RWF20 million per month while it pays RWF20 million to rent the infrastructure and RWF10 million for running costs.

“We are now making a payment list and we hope our employees will have been paid by the end of next week,” he said, confirming that employees will be paid for March, April and May.

While affected staff say the university owes them salaries spanning almost a year, Habumuremyi said the case differs from employee to employee but many of them have not received their salaries for the past three months.

“We have to look for long-term solutions. We want to be able to give out 49% to shareholders to be able to run the university smoothly,” he said.

University of Kibungo Vice-Chancellor Professor Egide Karugarama said delays were due to the fact that students do not pay tuition fees on time, exerting pressure on the institution’s limited resources.

“There has been an issue where students delay in paying tuition fees while we use the same fees to pay lecturers and the staff. It is a bad system that affects the cash flow, hence we are failing to pay our staff,” he said.

“We are working on it and the next term we will ensure that students pay first to ensure that we don’t have issues of cash scarcity. We will first cater for the arrears as soon as we get money,” he said.

Higher Education Council speaks out

Dr Emmanuel Muvunyi, executive director for the Higher Education Council, said he was not aware of any private universities that are not paying their staff.

He said the Higher Education Council is a regulatory body dealing with the operations of universities in line with the norms and standards that guide the functioning of higher education institutions, not the way they manage business.

“However, if universities do not pay their staff, we have to keep an eye on it because it is about norms and standards and the compromise on quality. Those who have complaints can let us know,” he said in a telephone interview.