[PHOTO/uonbi.ac.ke]
All learning in public universities has been paralysed after employees downed their tools in protest against delayed payment of their salaries.
University Way in Nairobi was impassable Monday morning as staff from all three university unions demonstrated towards the University of Nairobi demanding their pay.
This forced lecturers in class to terminate their lectures midway.
The boycott came after the University Academic Staff Union’s (Uasu) National Executive Committee had a meeting and resolved to carry on with the strike until the CBA they signed with the national government is fully implemented.
“We agreed on Sh6 billion for academic staff and Sh4 billion for non-teaching (staff). This is what we want to be paid at once because all the CBAs read the same and should have been paid on 30 June,” Uasu Secretary General Constantine Wasonga said.
According to the CBA signed and registered in March, 27,500 university staff registered with unions, Kenya Union of Domestic Hotels, Education, Health Institutions and Allied Workers (Kudheiha), the Kenya University Staff Union (Kusu) and Uasu were to be given Sh10 billion, which was already budgeted for in the current financial year.
Kusu Secretary General Charles Mukhwaya warned that the amount announced instead by the Cabinet Secretary was not what was in the CBA.
“That amount is a fallacy, it is as hollow as it is. He may have shared it with the media but we do not have anything to show that the Government has paid out the amount nor has it been officially communicated to us,” he said.
“But even if he did, it would be the second violation of the CBA. At no time during the negotiations did we agree with anybody that it would be paid in phases; neither did any party bring the proposal to the table.”
At Maseno University, the more than 1,300 Kusu and Kudheiha members used the better part of their time singing and chanting along the university streets and vowed not to go back to work.
“We negotiated this CBA for a very long time and the Government took another four years before signing it. They cannot claim that there is no money,” said branch Kusu chairman Peter Lisero.