Makerere to compensate lecturers teaching beyond 5pm

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Last week, Prof Ddumba wrote to Makerere University Academic Staff Association and assured them that their arrears will be paid

Kampala. The Makerere University Vice Chancellor, Prof John Ssentamu Ddumba, yesterday announced that with immediate effect, the management is going to start paying lecturers who teach beyond 5pm.
Saturday Monitor understands that the new announcement seeks to persuade the lecturers to call off their strike and return to lecture rooms. Last week, some distressed evening students threatened to strike if the lecturers sit-down continued.
However, Prof Ddumba warned that those lecturers who teach for an hour during the day will not be compensated.
“Lecturers can teach from 8am to 5pm but those who teach beyond 5pm, management agreed to compensate them. But if you are teaching one hour during the day, we can’t pay you,” Prof Ddumba said in an interview.
He added: “If lecturers are heavily loaded, we can hire more people.”
Prof Ddumba’s announcement comes after some lecturers suspended evening classes following the university’s decision to reduce incentives by 75 per cent, contrary to the 25 per cent they had earlier agreed on.
Although the strike is on, when this paper visited the university on Thursday evening, some lectures were on-going, while in other colleges students were redundant.

Further investigations also revealed that some evening students had joined their colleagues on day programme. However, this can only be sustained by students who are not working during day.
“They should clearly tell us why they admitted evening students because joining day class is not easy. Some of us are working,” said Mr Andama Bosco, a second year records and archives management student.
“When lecturers refused to teach us (evening students) on Wednesday, I started attending day classes today (Thursday). We came back late for this semester and we may not study everything that we are supposed to cover,” Ms Flavia Mutesi, a second year bachelor of development economics student, said on Thursday.

Last week, Prof Ddumba wrote to Makerere University Academic Staff Association and assured them that their arrears will be paid. However, the lecturers promised to meet and take a decision on whether to call off the strike or not. Prof Ddumba asked MUASA to urge academic staff to continue teaching.
There were no lectures at school of law, college of information computing and technology, college of business management when this reporter visited them on Thursday evening. Students could be seen in the environs clustered in groups chatting.
The university guild president, Mr Roy Ssemboga told Saturday Monitor that university management and MUASA had not informed students about what is going on.