Educational activities in public universities continue to be at a standstill due to the ongoing lecturers’ strike, which has now entered its fourth week. Meanwhile, Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba has announced that a new round of talks is planned for this weekend, with the aim of resolving the pay dispute.
While officiating the Koitalel University Council members’ inauguration at the Mosoriot campus, CS Ogamba said that representatives of the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) and Kenya University Staff Union (KUSU) would be meeting in Machakos to study the extent of implementation of the two agreements, 2017-2021 and 2025-2029 Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs).
The strike action that has been going on for quite a while has affected the entire public universities’ learning programs and has left numerous students helpless as the lecturers are demanding that their salaries arrears worth Sh7.9 billion be paid to them.
On the other hand, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) insists that Sh7.2 billion has already been released, hence there is a need for the discrepancy to be checked before a final decision is made, said Ogamba.
The unions, SRC, and university managements are holding discussions to ensure that the issue is resolved in a transparent and fair way, the CS assured, adding that he was hopeful that the deadlock would not last for long.
The results of the Machakos meeting will be the basis of the next step the lecturers will decide on, and it will probably be the end of the month-long crisis in the higher education sector.
