What you need to know:

The vice chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, in a February 18 letter addressed to one of the affected top staff in the Department of the Academic Registrar (names withheld), tasks him to show cause why disciplinary action should not be taken against him.

At least 70 Makerere University staff, both teaching and non-teaching, face dismissal if they fail to explain to the management why they were not found on duty during a headcount, Daily Monitor has learnt.
Sources at the university told this publication that a number of staff were not found in their offices when officials from the Appointments Board conducted the head count in January.
One of the sources said these staff face disciplinary action as prescribed in the University Human Resource Manual.
The vice chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, in a February 18 letter addressed to one of the affected top staff in the Department of the Academic Registrar (names withheld), tasks him to show cause why disciplinary action should not be taken against him.

“Management has further received information that this absenteeism and reporting late to work is your common practice …. hence tarnishing the good image of the university,” Prof Nawangwe said in the letter.
All the affected staff were given up to Tuesday (February 22) to respond.
Prof Barnabas told Daily Monitor on Tuesday that the headcount followed numerous complaints from students and stakeholders about poor service delivery in some university departments.
“Our clients and stakeholders were saying that some offices were permanently closed so we decided to find out whether these staff were on ground or not. The report from the appointments board indicated that the staff did not turn up for duty that day and there was no genuine communication,” Prof Nawangwe said.

He said that 50 out of the total 70 affected staff are from the office of the Academic Registrar where numerous complaints come from.
But Mr Bennet Magara, the chairperson of Makerere University Administrative Staff Association, said not all the listed staff were absent.
He explained that some staff report to their daily duty stations at colleges and sometimes do not report to the centre.
“The headcount was a genuine one but the staff whom I have seen with letters are those with an office at the centre (academic registrar’s office) but deployed at colleges. These should have missed the headcount,” he said.
The chairperson of the academic staff association, Dr Robert Kakuru, did not pick our calls.