Central University not collapsing - VC dismisses reports

“Recent news making the rounds in the media that the University is on the verge of collapse and about to lay off more of its staff is an untruth being peddled by some individuals for their own hidden agenda,” he said.

"The University was doing well, and with the help of the Central Gospel Church International (CGCI), is about to start the construction of the University Hospital as well as its City Campus at Teshie,” he stressed.

The university early this month fired 67 staff from various departments at Mataheko and Miotso campuses.

The staff staff were reported to be fired through text messages and given three-days to vacate their positions.

Mr. Emil Afenyo, registrar of the university, in a voice recording, while addressing the 67 affected persons following claims by management it is implementing a staff rationalization exercise to reduce the wage bill, he is heard talking about the poor finances of the institution.

He said in the audio that "In that document, the mandate they have given us is to reduce the staff cost by 40%. We have approximately 500 staff. So if you’re going to reduce the cost by 40%, you can imagine the number of staff that must be laid off."

"What we did over the last year was to try to negotiate it as much as possible to see if we could reassign people with the hope that the university numbers would expand then it will not be necessary for people to be laid off. So you see that last year twice we did quite a major set of the reassignments. It has helped 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.

"So meeting with the council (University Council) again in December they made it clear that whatever leeway we’ve been asking for we can’t have it, we need to finish up on this matter. So 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 off. It is not over. All drivers will ultimately be gone because that’s the position of the operational document," he added.