Central University Vice Chancellor ‘clashes’ with Registrar over ‘life support’ status

Vice Chancellor of Central University, Prof Bill Buenar Puplampu has said the statement attributed to the University’s Registrar, Mr Emil Afenyo that the Central University is running in “life support” is “an untruth”.

mynewsgh.com, with a tape to show, accurately reported the Registrar of the Central University, who, addressing university staff who had just been laid off said the University was in dire financial straits leading to a situation where they have been running the University on overdrafts for the past 10 months, and a huge staff cost of 2.7 million cedis.

“Last year, twice we did quite a major set of the reassignments. It has help only to an extent. As I am speaking our staff cost is still 2.7 million cedis and for the past 10 months we have been running only on overdrafts.”, the Registrar had said.

He continued: “A committee was set up to review how we would approach the matter. And the bottom line is that you are among probably the 2nd or 3rd batch of people who the university is going to let go of. It is not over. All drivers will ultimately be gone because that’s the position of the operational document. For one year we tried to stop it but we have reached a point where it is no longer sustainable; so this is not all the drivers. All security staff who are employed directly by the university will have to go because the position of the document is that we should outsource all those departments. So what we’ve tried to do, the mandate we were given was to develop a severance package such that at least no one goes away empty-handed.” The Registrar told the dismissed workers.

But Speaking at the 20th Matriculation Ceremony of the University on Wednesday 14th March 2018 at the Trinity Hall of the Miotso campus to confer studentship on 672 freshmen admitted during the February admission year; the Vice Chancellor of the University said the news that the University was at the verge of collapse and about to lay off more of its staff was “an untruth”.

He said the University was robust and announced that the University was about to start the construction of the University Hospital, sponsored by the International Central Gospel Church as well as its City Campus at Teshie in Accra.

mynewsgh.com earlier reported how a section of junior and senior staff of the central university were summoned via text msg on Monday morning of 29th January 2018 only to have their appointment terminated.

The university management headed by Vice Chancellor Prof. Bill Puplampu claimed to be implementing a staff rationalization exercise to reduce the wage bill and improve efficiencies in customer support, service delivery and administrative excellence. This staff rationalization programme is being implemented with the full approval of the university council chaired by Rev. Dr. Mensa Otabil who is the founder and General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church.

The University Registrar, speaking to the affected staff tried to justify it, saying it was not a ‘dismissal’. He also explained how the affected staff were selected, and why the University had to take that decision of laying off staff because they were in financial distress.

“Now the contract only spells out that this is not a dismissal. Because in previous times when some attempts were made by organizations and the questions of unfair terminations and the rest come up. It was drafted by our lawyers and the advice they have given is that if a company cannot pay its staff, it is within its rights to lay off some of them, and that is it.”, he said.

“I also want to make it clear, I am sure some of you are wondering why you are the ones on the list, not others and, it wasn’t done randomly, the Vice Chancellor set up a committee of very senior people who have worked with you or have supervised you at one time or the other. That committee met and then they gave us this list. This is not the end, there would be a bit more but this is what we have for now.”, he told the staff in the leaked audio.

He went on:

“The basic principle is for you to understand that you are not being asked to go because you are incompetent or lazy or whatever. The bottom line is that the university can’t afford. If we have two people in and office and one person can do the work, we are keeping one person and asking the other person to leave.”

The Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar, who are both principal officers of the University don’t seem to agree on what the true state of affairs is.

Some of the “dismissed” staff of the University who MYNEWSGH.com spoke to are miffed about the recent development and are wondering whether they were lied to by the Registrar so that the University will lay them off with a genuine excuse or whether the Vice Chancellor was rather being ‘untruthful’ about the true state of affairs of the university’s 2.7 million cedis staff wage bill and 10 months overdrafts.