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Students demand Makerere University opening
Makerere University students demonstrate during one of their recent strikes. PHOTO BY ALEX ESAGALA
KAMPALA.
Makerere University student leaders have demanded that the Vice Chancellor, Prof Ddumba Ssentamu, adheres to a directive by the Education minister and reopens the institution despite a strike by non-teaching staff over pay.
In an August 10 letter to all vice chancellors of public universities, the Education minister, Ms Janet Museveni, ordered for their reopening.
While the Kyambogo University vice chancellor, Prof Eli Katunguka, said he would comply with the directive, Prof Ddumba said he could not reopen a university with locked up offices and un-swept lecture rooms and halls of residence. He postponed the opening of Makerere University from Saturday until further notice.
The five public universities of Makerere, Busitema, Kyambogo, Gulu and Makerere University Business School (MUBS) were initially supposed to reopen on August 6, for the continuing and new students to report for the first semester of the new academic year.
However, the strike by the public universities non-teaching staff protesting government’s reneging on its promise to enhance their pay has paralysed the institutions of higher learning. The workers say government’s decision to increase pay of only the academic teaching staff in 2015 was discriminatory.
The Makerere University students guild at a meeting held August 12, chaired by acting guild president Jothan Burobuto, demanded that their vice chancellor abides by Ms Museveni’s directive to reopen the university, the strike notwithstanding. “We need the university opened as per the minister’s directive and resume normal operations without any further delay. As students we disregard the vice chancellor’s communiqué closing the university indefinitely,” the guild said in a statement.
“We, therefore, want to state that as students, we maintain August 13, 2016 (last Saturday) as the reporting date aided by the letter by Ms Janet Kataha Museveni,” the statement read in part.
Ironically, the student leaders said the industrial action of non-teaching staff is noble and justified and that they support it but also called for its end.
The students’ guild warned that they would undertake the opening of the University on their own. They also threatened to mobilise students for a peaceful demonstration today as a show of their dissatisfaction.
Public Universities Non-Teaching Staff Executives Forum (PUNTSEF) members met at Makerere University on Thursday and resolved that the strike, which started on August 1, will not be called off unless members’ salaries are enhanced and arrears are paid according to an agreement between them and the ministry.
