Members of Parliament sitting on the education committee have learnt that Makerere University’s Dental Schools requires Shillings 1.4 billion budgetary allocation to install all required equipment for the facility to become fully functional.
Makerere University requires 1.4 billion shillings
to operationalise the dental school.
This was disclosed by the University Secretary, Charles Barugahare
while appearing before Members of Parliament on the Education Committee. The
officials led by the Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe were discussing their
budget estimates for the coming financial year 2019/2020.
Barugahare told the committee chaired by Pallisa County MP Jacob
Opolot that the university in the 2018/2019 financial year procured and
installed 12 dental chairs worth 330 million shillings.
According to Barugahare, the requirements for the dental school currently need 1.37
billion shillings but government has only availed 400 million shillings in the
coming financial year 2019/2020.
Part of the required 1.37 billion, Shilling 130 million is to procure dental
chair accessories, 72 million Shillings to renovate and remodel custodian house
to turn it into a dental technology lab, 230 million to construct a temporally
shade for patients reception, canteen, lecture space and stores and
others.
The others are 17 million for shifting and installation of 11 old dental chairs
from Mulago Allied Health, 400 million for 20 new phantom heads for practical,
120 million for dental school and staff furniture and 400 million for
prosthetic dental lab equipment.
The Dental School train dentistry students and efforts to improve it started in
the 2016/2017 financial year with initial budgetary allocation of 200 million
shillings.
The School has four specialist units including Orthodontics and
Child health dentistry, Oral Maxillofacial unit, Restorative Dentistry and
Dental Public Health and Periodontology. It is housed under the Don Bosco
building.
The School currently has 17 academic staff out of which 8 are full-time staff,
3 part-time and 6 on contract. The University needs more 8 full-time staff
under the school to meet the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council (UMDPC)
standard ratio if 1:4.
Opolot said that the allocation of 400 million shillings annual allocation
to the dental school will not solve the issue. He said that the committee will recommend
an additional 285 million shillings in the coming financial year so that the
remaining money is allocated in the financial year 2020/2021.
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Makerere University has been allocated a budget of 16.5 billion shillings in
the coming financial year 2019/2020 up from the current 269 billion.
