“Makerere University has lost electronic data for at least 103,000 Senior Six leavers, who applied for government sponsorship in different universities last year,” confirms the daily monitor.
This comes at a time when the Public University Joint Admissions Board (PUJAB) hadn’t finished the selection process for this year.
Makerere University Deputy Vice-Chancellor in-charge of Academic Affairs Prof Umar Kakumba confirmed the incident.
However, he instilled confidence in the public saying that they have all the JAB applications in hard copies, hence, data will be recovered.
“This should not cause alarm within the public because we have all those Jab applications in hard copies and they are being recaptured and will be ready before the lockdown ends,” Prof Kakumba told the Daily Monitor.
Even though they have got the hard copies, the universities now might be forced to extend the date for admission which is supposed be May since this data has to be re-entered into the system manually.
The government-sponsored list is usually out by May 22 before admission for private students is issued.
For any student to be admitted to a public university or tertiary institution on government sponsorship you must have filled the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) forms before sitting their Senior Six examinations administered by Uganda National Examinations Board.
There is panic and pressure at the university as staff have been recalled from the lockdown to reenter the data from the submitted hard copies to the online system so this will automatically cause delays.
“I do not know if the process will not be compromised because there are some people who could have filled out low courses with hope that they would not perform well and only to excel.
“So with insiders, don’t you think manipulations can take place and vice versa. We suspect a possibility of doctoring information to suit particular courses based on the results,” sources added.
As information is now days got through social media channels first, several parents have been noticed online inquiring whether the list is out.
Loss of systems data is a common thing though it can be avoided by putting in place a reliable ICT infrastructure which can support data redundancy and disaster recovery in the time of failure.
