One month down, and there seems to be no hope that students in public universities will see their lecturers get back to teaching soon as the dons escalate their strike through demonstrations.
The UASU Sec-Gen, Wasonga warned that this is going to be the longest strike ever and students should leave the institutions.
“Go home and give us two years to sort out the lecturers’ strike,” Wasonga said.
UASU and KUSU, the unions behind the lectures strike, have accused the government of reluctance to address their grievances saying there has been no engagement on a deal to end the strike since it began.
The lecturers also reiterated negotiations should not be tied to job evaluation saying “who should evaluate who? Professors should evaluate the SRC, not vice versa.”
“For a month now, the Ministry of Education and vice-chancellors of our universities have been silent on this issue. We will not call off the strike until our demands are met,” said KUSU Sec-Gen Mukhwaya.
Amina Mohamed is in The Wrong Ministry
The lecturers also expressed their dissatisfaction with education CS, Amina Mohammed who they said is not conversant with the basic issues in the universities, like the number of lecturers.
“I was taken aback the other day when the CS admitted something like that publicly before a parliamentary committee,” said Wasonga.
“If you (Amina) want peace, give them a better offer, not just a counter offer. We want structured salary negotiations … we will not accept a global figure.” he added.
Students have been hard hit by these persistent lecturers strikes with one named Joy penning down her sentiments in a viral letter addressed to Uhuru which in part reads; “pictures in my social media timelines will not allow me to ignore the fact that my colleagues who started at private universities at the same time I did have since graduated. I have attended many of my friends’ graduation parties and I must say that it hurts to see my friends graduate when all I have is uncertainty.”
I have friends who are worse off than I am. They are almost a year behind me yet we started at the same time. The interesting bit is that they went to what is supposed to be the number one university in Kenya.”
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