Dons reject govt team set up for pay talks
Lecturers on Friday dismissed government’s attempts at forming a committee to review their demands for higher wages in a bid to resolving the stalemate between the parties.
Universities Academic Staff Union Secretary General Muga K’Olale said the teaching and non-teaching staff will continue with the on-going strike until the government agrees to pay them higher salaries.
He called on the university councils to resume talks with the government “as a matter of urgency and priority”.
“In the meantime, university workers should remain firm and sustain the strike because that is the only bargaining chip we have and is the way to force the government to reconvene for meaningful and lawful negotiations,” he said at a media briefing at the University of Nairobi.
On Thursday, a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Mwai Kibaki, faulted the striking workers for failing to enter into negotiations with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, which has the constitutional mandate to review the pay for public servants.
It also set up a committee comprising the ministers for Labour, Education, Higher Education, Medical Services, and Finance, and the Attorney-General to review the demands by the striking workers – lecturers, teachers and doctors – in light of their economic and legal implications.
The two principals, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and the ministers argued that the constitutional guidelines required that all aggrieved public servants open collective bargaining negotiations with the commission within the government budget cycle.
However, the time-frame within which the committee, chaired by Mr Dalmas Otieno, would complete its task was not given.
Mr K’Olale said the committee is an interested party in the stalemate and that Cabinet should have suggested an independent body that would mediate the discussions.
“The information we have is that the committee is supposed to delay until the next government comes in,” he said. “We shall not call off the strike until we have negotiated, signed and registered at the Industrial Court for implementation.”
Universities Non-Teaching Staff Union Secretary-General Charles Mukhwaya said the move by government was to hoodwink them and that it did not heed their call to resolve the matter.
He said last November’s strike was a warning to the government but it did not take the matter seriously.
“That was the opportune time for them to form committees to look into the matter,” he said and that the formation of a committee was just to save face.
Mr Mukhwaya called on President Kibaki, who last year said the matter of university staff pay should be addressed, to take on the matter as the relevant ministers had failed to take action.
“That can only amount to disrespecting the office of the President and we call upon him to get involved as a way of resolving and getting to an amicable solution,” he said.
The Union leaders said their demands are anchored in the Collective Bargaining Agreements they had tabled on the negotiations table.
“If the government is wishing that we are going to harsh this backlog of CBAs, so that then we emerge next year and start dealing with the 2013 onwards, let the government know they are wrong,” Mr Mukhwaya warned.
