Makerere lecturers vote to end two-month strike

Makerere University lecturers during a meeting on December 19, 2016 in which they agreed to suspend their strike. PHOTO | ALEX ESAGALA  

By RAYMOND TAMALE

Makerere University lecturers have voted to call off the nearly two-month strike easing the way for its re-opening.

During the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (Muasa) meeting on Monday, 81 of the 137 members who attended the assembly elected to suspend the strike. 57 voted against the suspension.

The vote is a key step that will likely see students of Uganda’s oldest and most prestigious university return to continue with their studies.

According to Muasa’s chairman Dr Muhammed Kiggundu, the University Council now needs to sort out pending issues that include paying the lecturers the unpaid incentives which triggered the sit-down. The incentives had been introduced in the 2013/14 academic year when lecturers demanded a pay increase.

The decision to open the university, however, rests with President Yoweri Museveni who ordered its closure on November 1 following weeks of students’ protests. The lecturers had downed their tools in late October.

“It is the president to decide when the university will open since he is the one who closed it, but we are ready to engage government to see the away forward,” Dr Kiggundu said.

The president has such powers accorded to him under the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act.

While details of the negotiations between the lecturers and the University Council are yet to be made public, sources have told The EastAfrican that the teaching staff has been promised two months’ salary (October and November) and a month of the incentive allowances.

The lecturers are demanding at least eight months of their unpaid allowances