APM appoints Unima Council
President Peter Mutharika yesterday appointed a new University of Malawi (Unima) Council barely four days after dissolving the previous one.
The President has appointed James Maida as chairperson of the board with Videlias Mluwira, company secretary at Nedbank (Malawi) Limited and Professor Lewis Mughogho as members.
Maida, who was already serving as chairperson of board of directors of the National Herbarium and Botanic Gardens, has replaced Professor Jack Wirima.
The appointments also come barely a day after lecturers at Chancellor College (Chanco), a constituent college of Unima, called off their strike which had been running for more than six months.
In a statement issued last evening and signed by Chief Secretary to the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) Lloyd Muhara, the board has 21 members, two of them in co-opted capacity.
The members include Unima vice-chancellor, principals of the four colleges of Unima, two members to be appointed by the council, four members appointed by the senate and two members appointed by Unima students union.
Others are one representative of the ex-students association, Secretary for Treasury and also Secretary for Education, Science and Technology.
The two co-opted members are Comptroller of Statutory Corporations and Secretary for Human Resource Management Development.
The lecturers were on strike to push the council to resolve salary disparities among academic staff in similar grades in Unima’s four constituent colleges of Chanco, The Polytechnic, Kamuzu College of Nursing and the College of Medicine (CoM), after it transpired that CoM lecturers were getting 40 percent more than their colleagues.
Mutharika, who is Unima Chancellor, dissolved the previous council in an attempt to bring sanity between the council and Unima academic staff.
Meanwhile, Mutharika has also appointed Professor James Bokosi as chairperson of board of directors of the National Herbarium and Botanic Gardens replacing Maida.n
