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By Godwin Abedican Arua Muni university has come out to deny having offered any scholarship opportunities to Aringa Cultural Institution in the ongoing implementation of the youth empowerment and transformation initiative RETE project. This comes after posts o
By Godwin Abedican
Arua
Muni university has come out to deny having offered any scholarship opportunities to Aringa Cultural Institution in the ongoing implementation of the youth empowerment and transformation initiative RETE project.
This comes after posts on Facebook were made by the kingdom Prime Minister Lemeriga Fadhil, indicating that his office received 15 scholarship positions from the university in partnership with MasterCard foundation to offer vocational training to refugees and host community youths under the RETE project.
The university in 2020 submitted a proposal to master card foundation after a call for proposals was made during the leadership of Prof. Clement Okia, where the University got funds to the tune of 27 Million US Dollars for the implementation of the proposal within a period of 4 years with the contract signed in September last year between master card foundation and the university.
Associate Professor, Simon Anguma Katrini, the university Vice Chancellor denies the circulating information saying the university does not have any arrangements in relation to that. He says the university started the process of recruiting the applicants for this project by flashing an advert for the youth to apply but some people took the information wrongly. “This project doesn’t award scholarships, it`s for youth empowerment. That was a misinformation,” the VC said.
To be ran by a consortium of 3 universities and 5 NGOs, with Muni University as the project lead together with Gulu and Bishop Stewart universities and Dann Church Aid, Finn Church Aid, CEFORD, Palm Corps, YARID and Meeting Point Kitgum as the other partners, the project targets achieving the transformation and empowering of one hundred thousand (100,000) youths within the four years Covering the 12 refugee hosting districts in Uganda and the three cities of Arua, Gulu and Mbarara where the 3 implementing universities are hosted.
Prof. Clement OKia, the project architect denies any frameworks of the proposal catering for scholarships “We needed to pass the rightful information to people. A scholarship would be where you give young people money and take them to school but that is mot the approach,” Prof. Okia clarified.
Under this project the youth are attached to the artisans based on their interest and the partners will directly pay the people who will skill the youth.
However when contacted about the post he made on Facebook indicating that the office of the Prime Minister Aringa Kingdom received scholarships from Muni University under this project, Lemeriga Fadhil the Prime Minister Aringa kingdom claims they received offer through another entity as opposed to his earlier post. “The kingdom was given 15 slots through Uganda Muslim Supreme Council, so we used various platforms to advertise the positions. We have actual recruited all the beneficiaries for those slots. We got ours through another organization,” he said in a telephone interview.
The project caters for a ratio of 70 to 30 percent for refugees and host communities youth respectively.
COVER PHOTO: Prof. Clement OKia (left) listens as Associate Professor, Simon Anguma Katrini the University VC (right) speaks to the Media By Godwin Abedican