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Kenya: Lecturers Set for May Salary Boost in New Deal

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6 years ago

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More than 9,000 lecturers and workers in public universities will in May earn higher salaries when their Collective Bargaining Agreement for 2017 to 2021 will be implemented.

Top of the agenda of the National Assembly, which will convene Wednesday, will be the passing of the supplementary budget which contains a provision for Sh6.6 billion — part of the Sh8.8 billion deal.

“We have been reliably informed that Sh6.6 billion, which was part of the Sh8.8 billion deal is in the supplementary budget and we might begin earning it in May at the very latest,” said University Academic Staff Union (Uasu) organising secretary Muiga Rugara.

He said the government had assured the lecturers that the balance of Sh2.2 billion would be included in the 2020/21 budget estimates in June.

“The uncertainties surrounding the CBA are now thankfully over. The National Assembly is obligated to pass the supplementary budget which also contains the Covid-19 emergency response funding,” said Dr Rugara by phone.

The latest development is in line with a January pledge to the lecturers by Education CS George Magoha that the pay deal would be implemented in two phases because it was not factored in the 2019/20 budget.

Under the CBA, university workers will earn a salary increment of between 5.75 to 6.27 per cent annually for 2017-2021.

The total figure sums up to Sh8.8 billion for all public universities, including their pension.

Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) chief executive Ann Gitau said the new basic salary structure covers a four-year CBA for the period 2017-2021 and is aligned with implementation of job evaluation results for public universities.

“The new basic salary is to be implemented in four equal phases consistent with the CBA cycle,” she said in a letter to the union when the deal was signed last year.

SRC chairperson Lyn Mengich said the Sh8.8 billion is exclusive of the four per cent average annual drift, which is the automatic annual increment and is dependent on the level of an individual’s job scale.

On Monday, Dr Rugara said the passing of the supplementary budget would ease anxiety and tension building up among lecturers over the fate of the CBA.

Uasu Secretary-General Constantine Wasonga had in January called out the lecturers for an indefinite work boycott over the government’s failure to honour the CBA signed on October 28 last year. The strike would have paralysed learning in 35 public institutions and the crisis would have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.