Things are getting heated up at Uganda’s best university Makerere University. Both teaching and non-teaching staff have gone on strike, basically, they’ve stopped working. They’re upset because they believe they’re not being paid fairly.
Back in 2015, the staff started asking the government to make sure their salaries were the same as people working at other public universities who had similar jobs. Seems fair, right? Finally, the government agreed and gave Makerere University a whopping Shs12.6 billion to sort out the pay differences.
But here’s where the drama starts. The university decided to only give the extra money to staff who had specific qualifications for their jobs. Staff are furious because they say that wasn’t part of the deal, they made with the government way back in 2015.
Dr Robert Kakuru, who leads the Makerere University Academic Staff Association, said, “We began discussions on salary harmonisation in 2015 after discovering that some staff with the same qualifications were earning more than us. When the government finally allocated the Shs12.6 billion, they introduced qualifications as a condition.”
He went on to say that the strike would continue until everyone got the pay rise they were promised. It’s not just the professors who are upset. Bennet Magara, who leads the non-teaching staff, agrees that it’s unfair for some people to be paid more for doing the same work.
To show how serious they are, the staff have closed down lecture rooms, the library, and even stopped cleaning. “Our offices will remain dirty, and no one can work in dirty offices,” Mr Magara said. The Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Barnabas Nawangwe, doesn’t seem too happy about the strike.
He thinks it’s illegal because the staff didn’t follow the proper rules for going on strike. He says the university is talking to the government about the salary issue, and people should just go back to work. However, the staff aren’t buying it. Isaac Okello, from the National Union of Education Institutions, says the university had plenty of time to fix things but didn’t.
“They introduced conditions that were never part of the negotiations. The money has been released, and the university should account for it. We negotiated based on numbers, not qualifications,” Mr Okello said. He also pointed out that none of the 5,000 people who should have gotten a pay rise have actually received anything.
READ MORE: Makerere University Students Face Dismissal Over Planned Tuition Protests
So, what happens now? The government has agreed to talk to both the university and the staff to try and find a solution. Hopefully, they can all come to an agreement soon so that things can get back to normal at Makerere University.