{"id":7809,"date":"2014-03-14T08:39:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T12:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=7809"},"modified":"2014-03-14T11:45:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T15:45:34","slug":"kenyan-public-university-lecturers-go-on-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/7809","title":{"rendered":"Kenya: Lecturers of Public Universities commence Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Public university lecturers and some non-teaching staffs in an estimated 30,000 institutions across Kenya have commenced a strike action over a rift with vice chancellors and other top administrative representatives.<\/p>\n

The dispute, reportedly over an unpaid sum of Sh 3.9 million due to the lecturers as part of a salary agreement in 2012, could potentially lead to the postponement of semester examinations in many universities scheduled for early next month.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week, representatives of Kenya’s Union of Academic Staff Union (UASU) and Kenya’s University Staff Union (KUSU) announced the strike action after a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Jacob Kaimenyi, failed to carve a path out of the crisis.<\/p>\n

However, on Tuesday, the Inter-Public University Consultative Forum (IPUCF) successfully secured an injunction against the strike.<\/p>\n

The Industrial Court reportedly also summoned representatives of Kenya’s lecturers’ unions to appear in court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

However, the injunction has been ignored and the lecturers failed to turn up to the hearing. According to them, the notice of the strike suspension was not properly served.<\/p>\n

Reports indicate that the Industrial court ruled for the notice to be served through national newspapers.<\/p>\n

In a recent report by Standard Digital, Mr. K’Olale decried what he described as “the misuse of courts…to intimidate workers who are demanding what is lawful for them.”<\/p>\n

He further called on the Chief Justice to “look into the Industrial Court, which has issued erroneous, unethical and immoral orders.”<\/p>\n

“The court is supposed to respect workers\u2019 rights, not to go against them” he added.<\/p>\n

The lecturers’ unions have reportedly also uncovered up to Sh 3 billion unaccounted for by the university’s administration.<\/p>\n

They have further accused Kenya’s public university administrators of fraud, abuse of office and incompetence.<\/p>\n

The administrators are yet to respond to these accusations. However, reports indicate that the delay in the payment of the Sh 3.9 million\u00a0is due to a budgetary deficit.<\/p>\n

Local media sources have reported that students across Kenya’s public universities have been forced to attend to their other interests as libraries and other facilities remains closed.<\/p>\n

A few confrontations between the striking lecturers and students were reported earlier in the week, but these only amounted to skirmishes.<\/p>\n

This strike by public university lecturers comes after a similar industrial action by teachers and doctors last year.<\/p>\n

According to some pundits, these overblown disagreements are an indication of several problems in the government’s relationship with public workers.<\/p>\n

Photo by Daily Nation: One of the protesting lecturers holds up a placard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public university lecturers and some non-teaching staffs in an estimated 30,000 institutions across Kenya have commenced a strike action over a rift with vice chancellors and other top administrative representatives. The dispute, reportedly over an unpaid sum of Sh 3.9…<\/span> Read more ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[1921,1920,4966,1918,1919,1917],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}