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There is no road map for salary negotiations - UNZALARU

There is no road map for salary negotiations - UNZALARU
By Lovely Kayombo and Namatama Mundia
Sun 01 July 2012, 13:23 CAT

UNIVERSITY of Zambia Lecturers and Researchers Union general secretary Jason Mwanza says there seems to be no road map for salary negotiations between the union and management.

And the lecturers have continued their sit-in protest until management agrees to convene a formal meeting with the union to discuss salary increment proposals. But University of Zambia council chairperson Sherry Thole has appealed to the
lecturers to resume work to ensure that operations at the institution are normalised.

In an interview, Mwanza said for over six years, lecturers' salaries have depleted by 126 percent and the union is trying to negotiate for salaries that will raise what they have already lost.

He said management is being deceptive by publicly announcing that they have given lecturers a salary increment when there is nothing to talk about except for the 10 per cent transport allowance.

Mwanza said management should indicate their annual increase for this year so that negotiations can commence and appreciated the efforts being made by education minister Dr John Phiri in addressing their concerns but demanded truthfulness from technocrats handling the matter of salary increments.

On Wednesday, Dr Phiri said his ministry has settled for a harmonized approach to determine terms and conditions of services to eliminate the disparities in salaries currently prevailing among the three public universities.

UNZA students Tuesday night protested, demanding the immediate re-opening of the institution and improvement of conditions of service for their lecturers who are currently on a go-slow.

And during a meeting with UNZALARU which was also attended by permanent secretary in charge of higher education Dr Patrick Nkanza, Thole urged the lectures to resume their duties taking into account that there were some students who were supposed to go to Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education while others are supposed to go to the school of medicine with over 3,000 students expected to graduate.

"The issues and concerns that had been raised by different unions/associations at UNZA could be discussed in the respective bargaining units while everyone was working," Thole said.

She appealed to UNZALARU to call off their go slow and resume work while
negotiations with management over improved conditions of service were going on.
Thole expressed great concern at the ongoing impasse at the Great East Road campus.

She further urged the lectures to take advantage of good will of government who are actively engaged and ensuring that they facilitate for an enabling teaching and research environment.

Thole added that the government was also going to put in place two technical
committees to propose ways of systematic dismantling of all debt that would accrue up to the end of this year and also to work out a sustainable pension scheme amongst the three public universities and others to come.

She also outlined in detail the steps that the government and management at UNZA had taken to resolve the issue.

Thole explained that government's approval to allow the Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education to vary its budget to allow the public universities to negotiate salary increments above the four percent ceiling using the Public Service Pay Policy had resulted in a 14 percent increment in the total wage bill for 2012, following a rationalisation and harmonisation exercise done by the Public Service Management Division (PSMD).

"While harmonisation across the three public universities was initially agreed upon with the unions, PSMD discovered that the exercise needed a lot more time since it required a job evaluation exercise," said Thole.

"The harmonisation process was now going to be phased, taking the vertical harmonisation at UNZA as phase one and the horizontal harmonisation among the three universities as phase two."

Labels: SALARIES, UNZALARU

posted by MrK @ 4:43 PM