Joshua Kulei Response to US Ambassador on Travel ban
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University sacks Kenyan impostor
Tuesday Feb 24, 2009
Management of St John’s University in Dodoma has sacked Kenyan Paul Maweu, who the university had engaged as a senior lecturer after he had tendered forged academic credentials. The University’s Vice- Chancellor, Professor Manoris Meshack told the ‘Daily News’ by phone from Dodoma that Mr Maweu’s employment was terminated with immediate effect since last week.
Mr Maweu (33) was sacked after he was discovered to have presented for employment fake credentials including certificates of secondary education, both BA and MA degree as well as PhD papers.
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According to the Curriculum Vitae he presented at the University, Mr Maweu painted himself as a BA graduate from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya where he said he graduated in 2001, Masters degree in 2004 from Lincolin University, Atlanta in the United States and a PhD from the same University in 2006.
“He is not here any more … we handed his matter to the state security organs who are now handling his case,” Prof Meshack said. Apart from forging papers, Prof Meshack said the Kenyan ‘lecturer’ was also found with a Tanzanian passport that demonstrates he also cheated about his citizenship.
The Immigration Department was reported to have initiated investigations on how he obtained the passport. Maweu entered the country in 2007 and joined Mwenge University College of Education (MUCE) in Moshi before storming the ranks of St John’s University last year, where somebody who happened to know him tipped off the authorities – and the Kenyan was immediately grounded pending verification of his credentials.
In another development, the Tanzania Commission on Universities (TUC) has cracked the whip at the growing number of foreign academicians reportedly securing top jobs in Tanzanian institutions of higher learning using dubious credentials to secure top posts in the Higher Learning Institutions.
TCU Executive Secretary Professor Mayunga Nkunya, told the ‘Daily News’ that his Commission had since given all foreigners teaching at the institutions up to mid March this year to submit all their credentials for verification. Professor Mayunga Nkunya added that the crackdown was a special move aiming at keeping the good image of home Universities and that of the country.
“We must do something before it is too late … we have to safeguard the country’s image and that of our institutions,” Prof Nkunya said. Meanwhile, Prof Nkunya has said he was prepared to advise the government and the National Electoral Commission (NEC) on how to introduce vetting mechanisms of academic credentials of candidates who will vie for political posts in future general elections.
The move comes amid widespread reports of some cabinet ministers and Members of Parliament holding fake academic credentials. “We intend to advise the electoral body on the exercise so as to get rid of this shame … Uganda is already doing this,” he said. Citing the enormity of the problem, Prof Nkunya said that some MPs holding fake PhDs had since approached some of the universities hunting for part-time teaching jobs.
Source-The Daily News
Fake Kenyan teachers rushing for plum university jobs in Tanzania
Saturday, February 25 2009
Students at the University of Dodoma: No less than 200 Kenyans who applied for jobs as lecturers and professors recently had bogus degrees.
It is emerging that suspiciously large numbers of Kenyans with faked degrees have been applying for university jobs in Tanzania.
Intelligence officials in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam have started investigations into what they suspect is an organised regional racket targeting Tanzanian universities to take advantage of the shortage of lecturers at the country’s institutions of higher learning.
The tip-off came when the prestigious University of Dodoma discovered that no less than 200 Kenyans who had applied for jobs as lecturers and professors had faked degrees; upon being confronted at interviews conducted in Nairobi, they admitted to fabricating the certificates.
Unable to take any direct action in a foreign country, the university had a quiet word with Tanzanian authorities, leading to the launch of an investigation by security organs from the two countries involving police, intelligence officials and eminent academics — whom the Tanzania government declined to name — who will co-operate to trace the 200, who have since disappeared into thin air.
A senior intelligence official told The EastAfrican last week that the investigation is a confidential process designed to fully gather all the facts related to the case.
“It will be done very carefully and very thoroughly between the two countries and it will take a bit of time,” said the official, adding that the faked certificates would be made available to Kenyan authorities to enable them to track down the fraudulent applicants as well as the suppliers of the false qualifications.
The saga started late last year when the University of Dodoma— the largest in the country, with more than 5,000 students — advertised vacancies for teaching staff and invited both local and foreign candidates to apply.
The university has been on a drive to employ more staff to meet the demand arising from its plan to enrol more than 40,000 students once its expansion programme is completed in the near future.
Prof Idriss Kikula, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dodoma, told The EastAfrican that the university invited both locals and foreigners to apply for different positions at the university and received a lot of applications from neighbouring Kenya.
Prof Kikula said that when university officials travelled to conduct interviews in Kenya, it was discovered that more than 200 people who had applied for positions that required them to have a professorship with a record of academic publications, presented fake certificates.
According to Prof Kikula, some of the candidates had credentials from Ireland when they had never been to that country, while others had professorships obtained in as short a period as six months.
“Most of the 200 failed to meet even the minimum publications needed for them to teach at the University,” he said, adding that they had banked on the notion that the university would accept them without undertaking a thorough verification exercise, since most schools, colleges and other institutes of higher learning in Tanzania are clamouring for personnel from Kenya.
“As you will recall, for 10 years, the Tanzania government froze employment of lecturers, compounding the problem,” said Prof Kikula.
Our sources said the bogus degree problem at Dodoma is likely to be widespread, mainly because the government has no uniform procedures to check whether employees’ alma maters are “diploma mills” that require little, if any, academic work.
The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics), Prof Makenya Maboko said there were more staff at the university discovered to have gained entry unlawfully by using forged documents.
The discovery comes some two months after the University of Dar es Salaam withdrew a degree it had conferred 20 years ago on one of its own staff after discovering that he had forged the certificates that got him into the university in the first place.
The University is now undertaking a verification exercise on documents tendered by newly recruited general staff, including drivers, some of whom are suspected to have forged credentials to work at Dodoma.
The proliferation of institutions with questionable reputation offering higher education is contributing to the problems facing genuine universities and other institutions of learning, he said.
Most Tanzania universities are running short of teaching staff, as there is no succession process to replace ageing lecturers, prompting many former academics who had gone on to become politicians and Members of Parliament to make a U-turn and return to academia.
One of the most prominent of these is the former Zanzibar chief minister, Dr Ghalib Bilal, a nuclear physicist. Another politician who has returned to teaching is former deputy finance minister Dr Festus Limbu, an economist.
The university is also in the process of creating a programme for short courses in conjunction with UNDP and the Tanzania Public Service Commission.
The University of Dodoma is now scouting for lecturers and other senior staff from Cuba, Russia and India as a short-term measure.
Dr Clinton Galabawa from the University of Dar es Salaam told The East African there was a system failure somewhere that needed to be addressed. Dr Galabawa said that tougher measures need to be taken immediately such things happen “or people will start thinking that if so-and-so did it and got away with it, then I can also do it.”
The University of Dodoma is designed to train and produce human capital in the major professions for economic development.
Its strengths will be mainly in information and communication technology and science-based programmes funded by the Bill Gate Foundation that will offer training in specialised areas such as molecular biology, genomics, nuclear sciences, medicine and engineering.
The Chancellor of the University is the former president of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa
Source-The East African
Kenya school in memory of U.S student
Hannah Congdon was known for being able to light up a room with her enthusiastic smile and dreamed of one day starting a school in a poor country.
The Fairport cheerleader planned to be an elementary school teacher and, after college, join the Peace Corps.
But Hannah’s dreams were cut short — at the age of 18 — by a tragic car accident a year ago June that took her life and four of her Fairport High classmates, days after they had graduated.
Next month, the ribbon-cutting will be held for the completed early childhood center of a new school being constructed in Kenya. The school bears Hannah’s name and is being built in the memory of all five classmates. On Jan. 12, the day after the ribbon-cutting, the childhood center opens.
“I’m sure that she’d be thrilled. This is what she wanted to do. We are lucky her dream is being realized,” said her father, Terry Congdon.
Marilyn Congdon, her mother, recently found a note written by Hannah saying that if she ever had a lot of money, she’d go to an impoverished nation, start a school and teach there.
On Jan. 5, the Congdons and their daughter Elizabeth, 22, who is a senior at Colgate University, will be part of a 17-member group flying to Kenya. The group is led by former Fairport schools Superintendent William Cala and his wife, Joanne. The Calas run the local nonprofit group Joining Hearts and Hands, which focuses on helping children in Kenya.
They organized a campaign, Hannah’s Hope, which raised about $50,000 for the school, located in the village of Katito, in western Kenya. The school is affiliated with a local Catholic parish, which is naming the school after Hannah.
Hannah left a lasting impression on the Calas when she was one of the 26 Fairport students who joined them in 2006 on 10-day trip to India to help victims of the tsunami that left much of the region devastated by seismic waves.
“She brought sunshine in a room. Every time we were with her, she was so kind to everyone,” said Joanne Cala.
Hannah and the other students helped take care of children in orphanages and schools in the southern part of India.
William Cala said Hannah always had a smile. “She was a very special person — uplifting to everyone all the time,” he said.
Each of the 17 people going on the January trip from here to Kenya will carry a suitcase of supplies for the new school and others Hearts and Hands is helping in Kenya.
This past Tuesday, Terry and Marilyn Congdon went to Plank Road North Elementary School in Webster and were presented with items to take to the new school by third-graders. Sharon Goodman, whose daughter Bailey was one of the Fairport teens killed in the crash, teaches reading at the school.
“They found out about the trip to Africa and they had a drive to collect supplies,” said Terry Congdon.
As a show of gratitude, the Congdons told the students about the new school and showed them pictures of it. They hope to return to the school in February and tell about their trip.
The early childhood center part of the school, built with the $50,000 raised by the Calas, includes three classrooms, along with a kitchen, latrines and a playground.
Some of the money will also be used to pay for the tuition of children who will be attending the school but whose parents died of AIDS.
When the childhood center opens on Jan. 12, about 40 children are slated to attend. Additional classrooms for older children are expected to be built when more money is raised.
Joanne Cala has obtained photos of Bailey Goodman and the other three teens — Meredith McClure, Sara Monnat and Katie Shirley — who died in the crash. Framed photos of all five from their days as elementary school students and as high school seniors will hang from one of the classrooms in the new school.
“We are looking at the girls as models,” Joanne Cala said.
Source- democratandchronicle
U.S student teaches Kenyan children
By: RACHEL ALBIN, Hub Intern
09/01/2008
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| Photo courtesy of Emily Fong
Emily Fong, a sophomore secondary education major at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, spent the summer teaching fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders in Kenya. |
KEARNEY – Emily Fong will be taking classes at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but the sophomore already had her own classroom in Africa.
From May through July Fong taught English grammar, French and math to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders outside of Nyahururu, Kenya.
Fong has wanted to teach French-speaking Africans English since learning about French-speaking populations in middle school.
She took her first trip to Kenya last summer, when she taught music at a Pan African Christian Exchange school. A group of 13 from Evangelical Free Church in Kearney volunteered.
After learning Fong spoke some French, the school’s director, Wachira Mgamau, invited her to return to Kenya. PACE’s Bible college expected to have French-speaking students from Rwanda and Sudan.
Upon arriving in Kenya, her assignment was changed to teach English-speaking elementary students.
“Pretty much anyone can teach (in Kenya),” she said. “I wasn’t sure how prepared I would be.”
Apart from teaching, there were lifestyle adjustments to make.
Fong made a home out of an abandoned basement office in the PACE compound. She was the only Caucasian in memory to live on school grounds, but she soon shared the room with another Caucasian student from Kearney, Jessie Doiel.
Doiel met Fong at a potluck in Kearney, and within an hour the strangers agreed to go to Kenya together.
The young women sent letters to church members asking for support and had a garage sale. They raised more than $6,000 in two months.
“God really provided for us,” Fong said, “We felt that was just confirmation that we were supposed to go over there.”
Together, the roommates adjusted to living in Kenya, boiling drinking water and accepting that the nearby river would likely never wash out the red dirt on their clothes.
“I don’t really miss bucket-showers either,” Fong said.
Trips to town required three-mile walks on clay-like roads where puddles gathered the almost daily rain. An old woman in one of the shops along that road asked Fong and Doiel to stop for tea each time they passed.
Inviting near-strangers for tea or a meal is common in Kenya, Fong said, and there seems to always be room at the table for one more.
“(Kenyans) will cook enough food just in case someone comes in,” Fong said.
At first, the girls rushed by and into town to run errands, brushing off the tea-offering vendor. Soon, they learned that task mastering is not first priority in Kenya – people are.
One day, Fong drove to town with Mgamau, who had a long to-do list and a short time to spare. Mgamau saw a woman he knew, stopped the car, got out and chatted with her even though his schedule was pressing.
“People are more important than projects,” Fong said.
However, Kenyans don’t take work lightly.
Living in Kenya is inexpensive, but money is hard to earn, Fong said, so people put great effort into work. In the poorer region Fong worked in, residents woke up early to milk cows and work in gardens.
“(In the United States) it’s almost too easy,” Fong said. “It almost makes me feel uncomfortable.”
In Kenya, even schoolchildren take duties seriously.
Students sometimes stayed in the classroom during the break after French class and asked Fong to teach more.
“Kids over there have such a desire to learn,” she said, “… and because they want to learn, they do so well.”
Student-elected prefects helped keep peers in order during the morning tea break and school lunches of ground maize and shredded cabbage.
Some students had personal lives troubled by politics and disease.
One student was a Rwandan orphan whose family was killed in genocide in 1994.
Others were forced from their homes during recent political uprising in Kenya and taken in by PACE.
A few children at the school have AIDS.
Doiel is organizing a seminar on AIDS and sexual health for young women there. She put school on hold to remain in Kenya until December and continues working as a nurse at PACE and in area villages.
Fong returned to Nebraska for school but isn’t finished with Kenya.
PACE hopes to add a high school to it the primary school, vocational school and Bible college at the compound near Nyahururu as well as a branch in Rwanda, where French-speaking teachers would be needed. Mgamau told Fong she has a job when graduates.
“I’m so thankful (Kenyans) were able to accept me even though I’m so different,” she said. “… I’m excited to have so many doors open, so many possibilities.”
e-mail to:
rachel.albin@kearneyhub.com
Source- kearneyhub
Kenyatta remembered
Fri, Aug 22, 2008
President Mwai Kibaki on Friday led the nation in commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of the founding father of the nation Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
President Kibaki joined Mzee Kenyatta’s family led by the widow mama Ngina Kenyatta and the Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta in laying a wreath at the mausoleum of the late President at parliament buildings before attending a memorial service at the Holy Minor Basilica.
The Head of State, the late President’s family, the Speaker of the National Assembly Kenneth Marende and the chief of General staff Jeremiah Kianda were among dignitaries who observed two minutes silence in remembrance of the founding father of the Nation.
In his sermons based on the books of Wisdom 4: 7-15, Romans 12:3-13 and Matthew 5:1-12, his lordship Bishop David Kamau, said Mzee Kenyatta’s name stood for the ‘light of Kenya’ and was today being remembered for his vision for a united Kenya.
Bishop Kamau said leaders who incite Kenyans to violence were acting against a united Kenya the founding father and other freedom fighters fought for and should be rejected.
Prayers were said for the President, Government and the nation.
Other dignitaries who laid wreaths were the Chief of General Staff Jeremiah Kianga and the Speaker of the National Assembly Kenneth Marende.
New U.S program will allow illegal immigrants to surrender to authorities
Friday August 1 2008
Starting next week, a new pilot programme will allow illegal immigrants in the US who have ignored deportation orders to turn themselves in without being arrested.
In exchange for surrendering, the immigrants will get up to three months to make arrangements for their children or spouses, gather their savings or make other preparations before leaving the country.
The US immigration and customs enforcement programme, dubbed Operation Scheduled Departure, is aimed at about 457,000 illegal immigrants who have deportation orders but no criminal history. It will run from August 5 to August 22 in Chicago; Santa Ana, California.; San Diego; Phoenix; and Charlotte, North Carolina, and could be expanded.
Volunteers would be required to wear electronic ankle monitors or report to ICE by phone periodically, according to a press release. ICE would make travel arrangements for those who cannot pay for flights back to their home countries.
“The programme addresses concerns raised by aliens, community groups and immigration attorneys who say ICE unnecessarily disrupts families while enforcing the law,” Julie Myers, homeland security assistant secretary for ICE, said in a statement.
“By participating in the scheduled departure programme those who have had their day in court and have been ordered to leave the country have an opportunity to comply with the law and gain control of how their families are affected by their removal.”
ICE has 90 “fugitive operations” teams across the country to track down illegal immigrants with outstanding deportation orders.
“This is an opportunity for them to come forward instead of waiting for the day ICE officers come to the door,” said agency spokeswoman Gail Montenegro.
Some lawmakers have criticised ICE’s recent, large-scale raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant that netted nearly 400 undocumented workers. Several advocacy groups yesterday rejected the new programme as a poor substitute for immigration reform.
“It’s the political silly season and this is a very silly idea which seems more about public relations than solutions,” said Josh Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “They are trying to put a happy face on some very brutal actions that have been destroying families.”
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