Unima staff go on strike
Support staff in the University of Malawi (Unima) on Monday started a strike to force government to increase their perks, an action that would disrupt an already out of tune university calendar.
Unima lecturers are set to join the industrial action following government’s failure to meet a commitment it made on September 12 2013 to adjust their salaries by 25 percent across the board effective July 1 2013.
The support staff at the Polytechnic, who were expected to be joined by colleagues in all Unima colleges, notably College of Medicine, Kamuzu College of Nursing and Chancellor College, have declared a full-fledged strike.
Lecturers, who are members of the Chancellor College Academic Staff Union (Ccasu) in Zomba, are set to hold a meeting today (Tuesday) on the way forward after it has been made clear government would not implement the agreed salary increment.
Ccasu president Sunduzwayo Madise said in an interview it would be up to members to decide the way forward, but insiders disclosed that industrial action was a definite way forward.
Polytechnic Academic and Administrative Staff Committee on Social Welfare secretary general Gift Khangamwa said in an interview on Monday they were in the process of communicating in writing to the University Council on the move they would take.
Insiders, however, disclosed that Polytechnic lecturers have settled for industrial action.
Government, represented by officials from ministries of Finance, Statutory Corporations and Education met representatives of Unima Council and representatives of the lecturers from all the colleges on September 12 2013 in Lilongwe where an agreement was entered to increase the lecturers’ perks by 25 percent effective July 1 2013.
The negotiations, according to minutes The Nation has seen, were initiated by the Unima lecturers through their welfare committees and the University Workers Trade Union after it was discovered that the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) had implemented salaries that were 25 percent higher than those of their colleagues under Unima.
The meeting, which the shot budget director Paul Mphwiyo attended, agreed that after the discussions on salary had been cordially concluded, there was no cause for those that attended to begin talking to the press or go on strike.
Ironically, a week after the negotiating meeting, Treasury on September 20 2013 wrote Unima vice chancellor, arguing government had difficulties to source additional funding amounting to K876 million which Unima requested.
Treasury said government has also made it clear to Luanar to stop forthwith the implementation of the new salary structure effected in July.
Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology Dr MacPhail Magwira, according to the communication The Nation has seen, wrote the vice-chancellor of Luanar on September 11 2013, advising that his efforts to come up with their own conditions of service was premature.
