By Ismail Auwal
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Kano University of Science and Technology (KUST), has threatened to down tools after accusing the school administration of squandering students’ registration fees.
The union claimed that registration fees collected from students had been squandered and misapplied over the years.
This was disclosed in a statement received by SAHELIAN TIMES on Tuesday, which was signed by KUST Wudil, ASUU branch Chairman, Muhammad Sani Gaya, and Secretary, Murtala Muhammad.
According to the statement, the union opposes the use of any component of students registration fees to offset a N200m loan facility with 10% interest used to purchase eight exotic vehicles.
‘’The procurement violated section 16 subsection (1), section 24, section 25 and section 42 of the Public Procurement Act 2007 and Kano State Appropriation Law 2019,‘’ the statement said.
‘’The students who went for SIWES in 2020/2021 session were not given Log book for daily record of the experiences gained, despite collecting N 500 for the Log book and N 3000 for SIWES/TP in the registration fees.
‘’The students paid N3000 as internet service charges; however, the internet service has become history in the university. There is also inadequate supply of pharmaceutical drugs and other medical facilities despite collecting fees from the students, the statement alleged.
‘’The students are made to enroll into non-functional health insurance scheme. Salary arrears of staff ranging from one to three months not paid and the irony is that their pension contributions for the said period were deducted.’’
‘’Misappropriation/Misapplication of funds has become a norm with the university authority. To this effect, the university authority has diverted over N 352 Million of staff pension contributions in gross violation of section 11 subsection 3 (b) and 70(2) of the pension reform Act 2014 and section 7(2) of Kano state pension and gratuity Law.’’
‘’Furthermore, the taxes deducted from the staff salaries have not been fully remitted to Kano Internal Revenue Service (KIRS). It became so embarrassing that the KIRS had to drag the university to Tax Appeal Tribunal in Kaduna after what they described as the nonchalant attitude of the university authority to respond to the KIRS correspondences on the unremitted tax deductions.’’
