Lawmakers have ordered a forensic audit on the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) following revelations it has not paid employees since 2013 when it got a university charter. 

The audit, which will be carried out by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu, will take three months and will cover the years 2013 to 2025. MPs who sit in the Public Investments Committee (PIC) on Governance and Education have also summoned Education Cabinet Secretary Migos Ogamba and his Principal Secretary Julius Bitok next week to shed light on the happenings at the Nairobi-based institution, previously known as Kenya Polytechnic. 

The committee chairperson and Bumula MP Wanami Wamboka said the situation at TUK is worrying and needs urgent attention owing to the fact that employees have gone without pay for long. 

“We are going to direct further how the university will run after meeting with the minister and his team next week because clearly something is amok within this university. Mr VC you cannot talk of excellence in the university yet we see what is happening,” the MP said. 

Wamboka noted that it is questionable the university is the only one with salary arrears yet other big universities have been facing challenges since the introduction of the new funding model. 

Central Imenti MP Moses Kirima said only a special audit would unearth what has been happening at the university even as he regretted that the current woes bedevilling universities are because the appointments of various Vice Chancellors are political. 

“I think the solution is to have a special audit done from 2013 to know the number of students the facility has been admitting compared to the staff that the institution has,” he noted. 

The sentiments by the MPs came after TUK VC Benedict Mutua told the MPs that the institution has not been paying salaries since 2013. He said that the institution has also never, since 2013, remitted statutory deductions due to budgetary constraints. 

The VC said that monthly they are supposed to pay salaries amounting to Sh272 million but only received a capitation of Sh63.3 million from the government as they are supposed to generate through Appropriation in Aid (AIA). 

As of now, he said, they have been forced to allow students to learn and sit for exams despite them not paying school fees following the government directive that no students should be denied the chance to sit their exams. 

Mutua however said the bigger problem the institution has had to deal with is the high wage bill as they are required to pay salaries amounting to Sh3.04 billion annually to support about 1,820 staff yet they only have 14,200 students. 

Attempts by Former Vice-chancellor Francis Aduol to explain that the situation at the university did not go down well as MPs party blamed him for the current mess.