KENYA: Lecturers threaten strike over broken promises

Kenya is facing fresh threats of a lecturers' strike over delayed implementation of new salaries and allowances, which could jeopardise learning in public universities from 9 November. Lecturers are also up in arms over government's decision to double the student intake in the absence of increased staff and infrastructure.

Close to 9,000 lecturers from Kenya's 18 public universities and colleges said they would down tools next week, after the government failed to implement the 2010-12 collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, signed last year.

Lecturers are also blaming university councils for violating the constitution and failing to implement part of the 2008-10 collective bargaining agreement.

The government has made last-minute efforts to avert the strike. On Wednesday Higher Education Permanent Secretary Crispus Kiamba (pictured) ordered university administrators and the Universities' Academic Staff Union (UASU) to resume talks on the CBA stalemate. But by the end of Thursday the parties had failed to heed the call.

Academics said the strike would be held until the government honoured the agreement, which would see many lecturers receive massive salary increases.

If the CBA is fully honoured, professors can expect their monthly salaries to increase from the current range of between Sh63,199 (US$631) and Sh81,828 (US$818) to between Sh384,000 (US$3,840) and Sh576,000 (US$5,760). Workers at the lower end of the salary spectrum, such as graduate assistants, can expect their salaries to rise to between Sh79,550 and Sh134,550 a month.

This is the second time lecturers are threatening to strike over the failure to implement the CBA, with academics previously striking in late 2010.

"We will strike. University councils are to blame for the violation of the CBA," said UASU secretary general Muga K'Olale.

Low pay is being blamed for an exodus of lecturers from Kenyan universities, not only to Europe and North America but also to neighbouring countries such as Botswana, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, where tutors are paid better and handle lower numbers of students per class. In Tanzania, the average monthly salary of a lecturer is around US$3,000.

Apart from poor pay, lecturers complain of lack of time to concentrate on research because of undergraduate teaching commitments.

And lecturers are also up in arms over the government's decision to enrol thousands more university students this year, to help clear an admissions backlog of 40,000 places, as previously reported in University World News.

UASU has repeatedly warned that the student expansion plan would only be possible if more staff were hired and physical infrastructure were expanded. Otherwise, it would only mean more work for them.

The pending strike has added to growing concerns about problems facing public universities. Educationists say a shortage of qualified lecturers and low morale among academics due to low pay are hurting the quality of learning for an already surging number of students.

Although the number of lecturers has been growing, it lags far behind the student enrolment rate, forcing many universities to hire under-qualified staff for academic positions. UASU data indicates that there are 8,000 lecturers - up from 7,000 four years ago. But during the same period, student enrolment grew from 91,541 to 140,000.

Education experts and university administrators have argued that rising enrolment can only be handled if government pumps in more funds to hire extra tutors and improve pay for the teaching force, to boost morale.

A 2010 survey by Kenya's Commission for Higher Education showed the country's 30 universities were being crippled by an acute shortage of professors, with institutions increasingly turning to part-time lecturers to address the shortfall. The higher education commission said there were only 352 professors in Kenya's universities.

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