Nairobi, KENYA: Some public universities have been said to be undertaking statutory deductions from their staff without remitting it.
This emerged on Thursday when the University Academic Staff Union (UASU) and the Kenya University Staff Union (KUSU) appeared before the Senate’s Education Committee.
The Chairman of UASU Muga Kolale told the Senate’s committee on education that Moi University owes its staff pensions deductions close to sh. 6million resulting in some staff going on retirement without getting their pensions.
Kolale also condemned the Vice-chancellors for always botching the negotiation process between the staff unions and the government, citing an example whereby the government last year gave out sh. 7.8billion to deal with the lecturers’ woes, only for the vice chancellors to release half of the monies.
The UASU secretary general Constantine Wasonga reiterated that vice-chancellors have been intentionally bloating the number of staffs in the learning institutions, calling for a headcount of all the staffs in the public universities.
“I want to request Senate to order that there is physical head count for university workers in this country what university managers present to ministry is not really, when we did our audit last year before this CBA was implemented .we found that they inflated numbers with 3,000 and no government agency has taken any measure to curtail this,”Wasonga said.
He said that the unions are ready to negotiate noting that only 6 Universities have implemented the CBA’s.
Meanwhile, the Union slammed the Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed for remaining mum on the issue.
The Inter-Public Universities Councils Consultative Forum has moved to court in a bid to block lecturers and university workers from downing their tools over their salaries.
