House select committee seeks clarification over UTG audit report

By Landing Colley

The National Assembly select committee on education Wednesday asked officials of the University of The Gambia to clarify their audit report.

In his response, Ousainou Corr director of finance of UTG said: “the board of committee requires for the internal audit report directly because they are part of the UTG for administrative matters but for technical matter they are said to report directly to audit of committee.”

He added: “The problem of skill set has been a very high limiting factor and what we have done now in current set up of the audit committee will enable us to have the status update on all the corrective measure that are necessary.”

He said the major source of funding of the UTG is the tuition fees, adding “because more than 85% is derive from the tuition fees which are not in line with best practice but non-function of the research unit has made that impossible.”

He continued: “since 2015 there was no increment on the tuition fees and the approval of the tuition fees fall under the purview of the university governing council. The challenges are ranging from technical man power capacity and that has been a problem for the university.”

The assessment of compliance of National Accreditation and Quality Assurance (NAQAA) report states  “UTG was found on Mission, Vision and Philosophy 100 percent (which denotes fully compliant), Governance, management, strategic planning 62 percent( partially compliant), quality assurance management 20 percent (non-compliant), academic programs 36 percent (non-complaint), teaching resources and library services 55 percent (non-complaint), research and development activities 10 percent (non-compliant), physical resources 41 percent (non-compliant) and financial resources 55 percent (non-compliant).”