The troubles in Kenya’s education sector continue unabated with lecturers in all 35 public universities halting work from September 18.
As the students, the majority of them newly in the market, sat idle in the lecture halls or roamed about, their teachers took to the streets, waving banners and doing jigs, while blowing whistles and vuvuzelas to express their anger against their unfulfilled demands.
The dons’ strike comes just days after the secondary school teachers had ended their work boycott. Their primary school counterparts had called off their strike at the last minute at the beginning of this month after their Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) struck a deal with their employer, the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC).
It also comes hot on the heels of protests by public university students against a new funding model, many accuse of locking out bright students from poor backgrounds.
A reprieve however came on September 8 when the students agreed to suspend their protests for 30 days after Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba announced that he would form two committees to address the contentious issues in the new funding model.
President William Ruto has since formed a 129-member committee to review the controversial model. The committee that will report to and be accountable to the President through the Cabinet Secretary for Education is expected to deliver its report after eight weeks, with effect from September 16.
The university dons made true their work boycott threat on the advice of their two umbrella bodies, the University Academic Staff Union (UASU) and the Kenya Universities Staff Union (KUSU) over the implementation of the 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). It contained their proposal that was submitted on September 4, 2020.
Under the CBA, UASU had, on September 11, issued a seven-day work boycott notice, outlining several unresolved issues with the government, hence the commencement of the work boycott on September 18.
At the core of the lecturers’ demands is the salary. UASU had proposed a minimum $770 for the lowest-paid lecturer—a graduate assistant or tutorial fellow—and $2,610 for the highest-paid professor. The current basic salary of the lowest-earning lecturer stands at $450, while the highest earns $1,621, excluding allowances.
Their other grievances include the persistently late payment of salaries, arbitrary pay cuts, heavy workloads, lack of career progression and failure by the government to remit the statutory deductions from the payrolls to other institutions. Last year, for instance, public universities and other tertiary learning institutions failed to remit an estimated $7.7 million (Sh1bn) deducted from payroll to saving cooperatives, subjecting employees to penalties on prevailing loans and tighter lending terms for loans in future.
While expressing their readiness to negotiate, the secretaries general of UASU and KUSU Constantin Wasonga and Charles Mukhwaya, respectively, have vowed no return to work until their grievances are addressed.
When all is said and done, resolving the public universities’ money matters will remain a challenge. As it were, virtually all the public universities were in a financial dilemma. A report tabled in parliament early this year showed that 23 of the over 35 universitiesand their constituent colleges were on the verge of collapse from heavy debts.
