Staff Reporter
MASERU — The National University of Lesotho (NUL) council was forced to cancel its urgent meeting on Friday afternoon after it failed to form a quorum.
The emergency meeting at the Lesotho College of Education had been called to deal with a looming financial crisis at the university.
Since its financial year ended on June 30 the university has not been able to pay suppliers and meet other obligations because the council has not approved a new budget.
The council was initially scheduled to discuss the budget on June 21, nine days before the financial year-end, but the meeting was postponed to June 27.
No reasons were given for the postponement.
There was more bad news on June 24 when the university’s registrar Tumelo Tsikoane announced that the June 27 meeting was being postponed indefinitely due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
Since then the university has been operating without a budget and efforts by the management to get the council to approve the release of M45 million for immediate use have failed.
On Tuesday night Tsikoane called an urgent meeting for Friday.
The meeting was supposed to start at 2pm.
However, only 10 of the 27 council members were present, making it impossible to have the meeting because there was no quorum.
Twelve members are required to form a quorum that can approve the budget and make other decisions.
The ten council members who were present waited for 15 minutes for other members and then cancelled the meeting.
Council chairman Molotsi Monyamane confirmed that the meeting was cancelled.
He warned that the cancellation of the meeting will have serious repercussions for the university.
“This means that NUL is still without a budget and therefore cannot pay anyone, including the employees,” Monyamane said.
He said he could not rule out the possibility that the university might be forced to close if the impasse is not resolved soon.
Pro Vice-Chancellor Mafa Sejanamane who did not attend the meeting said the situation at the university was desperate.
“At the moment we cannot pay anything,” Sejanamane said.
“Luckily creditors are paid at the end of the month so we still have some time. One hopes that the new council will be appointed soon.”