With the university lecturers’ strike now in its second week, students are, of course, bearing the brunt of the apparent shutdown.
Their tutors have a right to fight for better terms, but the real priority is to ensure that these young people get an education that will benefit them in the future. As the learners suffer the denial of their right to be taught, their parents, who sacrifice a lot to enable their children to seek knowledge and career paths, are frustrated.
The academic programmes for more than 700,000 students in public universities have been disrupted, with their hope for a quick resolution dashed by the collapse of negotiations between the lecturers’ union and the representatives of their employers. Families are incurring extra expenses on food, accommodation, and transport, and yet no learning is going on.
Students face stress and anxiety due to the rising uncertainty as to when their lecturers will resume duty.
They fear that their upkeep money will run out as the standoff continues. First-year students are bearing the heaviest burden of the shutdown as their orientation has been disrupted. They are demoralised as the strike began less than a month after they reported to their campuses.
The strike by the Universities Academic Staff Union (Uasu) and others on October 2 has paralysed learning in public universities. The crisis deepened after unions rejected a Sh12 billion government counter-offer. The umbrella Kenya University Students Union has asked Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba to help fast-track the negotiations and secure an agreement on the implementation of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for 2025 to 2029. The lecturers are demanding the implementation of the CBA, which covers basic salaries, allowances, car loans, and mortgages, and Sh7.9 billion in past commitments. They have vowed not to resume teaching until the dispute is fully resolved.
The major parties in the negotiations need to soberly address the financial deadlock for learning to resume immediately.
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