Staff of public universities should end industrial action

The Ministry of Education and Sports would like to clarify on the matter of pay enhancement for public university staff, which is a commitment that government undertook to meet in a progressive manner during Financial Year 2017/18. Related to this, is the matter of outstanding arrears of Shs4.3b to non-teaching staff of public universities in salary scales M10-M22.

For over a year, there have been back and forth consultations at various levels of government, including Cabinet, the line ministries responsible for Public Service, Finance, and Education as well as authorities and representatives of staff at public universities with a view to conclusively address any outstanding issues.

Delays in having this matter resolved earlier are attributed to the process of confirming the required resources against actual numbers of beneficiaries before approval of a supplementary budget for this purpose.

Funds are, however, disbursed to individual universities, which are responsible for managing the payrolls and therefore salary payments to the staff.

It is gratifying that this process has now been concluded and in response to requests from his counterparts at the ministries of Public Service and Finance, Mr Alex Kakooza, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education and Sports, January 9, 2019 approved the “proposed allocation schedule of Shs29.5b for salary enhancement in FY 2018/19 and Shs4.3b as arrears for Non-Teaching Staff”, to enable the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to, in the words of the Permanent Secretary and Secretary to Treasury (PS/ST), “urgently release the funds to the universities this Quarter Three (January-March 2019).

The PS/ST went even further to give assurances on Monday, January7, 2019, using public media to the effect that government had made provision for release of these funds as part of releases made for Quarter Three of the current Financial Year (2018/19).

As to when funds are finally received on the university bank accounts and ultimately those of staff, is simply a process issue, but should not be very long after the actual releases are made by the Ministry of Finance.

The ministry would, therefore, wish to appeal to public university teaching and non-teaching staff individually and/or collectively through their various staff associations, to abandon statements that call for perpetuation of industrial action either because the funds released (Shs29.5b) are assumed not to include arrears of non-teaching staff or until they are receipted on their personal bank accounts.

This is particularly so because in the discussions and computation of what is outstanding, issues of pay enhancement and arrears were treated inseparably and when the funds are released, it will be unfortunate to realise that both issues have been satisfactorily addressed; rendering any calls for continued industrial action unjustified!

The concerned staff ought to have some faith in the university accounting officers who provided the details regarding number of beneficiaries and actual amounts due to each since these formed the basis for computations that were subsequently duly verified by the Ministries of Public Service and that of Education and Sports.

The only remaining outstanding issue raised by the staff leadership is that of the need to conclusively review the pay structure for public universities. This is being handled and should soon be concluded too.

There has already been engagement on the matter between ministries of Public Service, Finance and Education. It clearly cannot be concluded within a day, week or even by end of month, but good ground has been covered.

The Ministry of Education and Sports, through its political and relevant technical leaders, will be happy to engage further with the representative associations for the academic and non-teaching staff on this or any matter either of their interest or concern, but doing so without any further disruption to normal operations of their institutions. We appeal to your patriotic sense of duty to happily go about your work and enable the universities to function as expected.