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"speaker_name": "Dr. Wekesa",
"speaker_title": "The Minister for Science and Technology",
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"content": " Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, first of all, I want to say that I do agree that this is a national issue. I also want to November 2, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 3409 correct the notion that the Government is not willing to negotiate. I do not want to beat my own drum, but the Chair may remember that I chaired the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) meetings which needed a lot of skills in negotiations. I am prepared to negotiate over this matter. However, I want to say that I did give an opportunity to UASU officials to speak to me. They came to my office twice and also met them in Naivasha. I was in the process of talking to them, but, all over a sudden, they disappeared and, later on, surfaced to declare the strike. That was a rushed decision because we were prepared to negotiate with them. We had put machinery in place. A reconciliator was appointed and we had the inter-public university forum which included officials from my Ministry, UASU and universities. However, the UASU leadership seems to want to use the strike to negotiate. I just want to say that a strike does not do us any good. A strike is punishing our children and the parents. We, hon. Members here, are directly affected by a strike of this nature. I am appealing to the UASU leadership to obey the court order which is very clear. It says that they should come to us and we negotiate out of court. We are willing to do so. Let me enlighten my colleagues about what has been going on in the Ministry of Education. In the year 2004, we had a strike and the Government addressed the issue. We, at that time, agreed that the issue of remuneration of our lecturers was to be looked into and we raised their salaries by almost 120 per cent, across the board. As my colleague has said, it is only professors who got a 117 per cent rise. However, the other categories got over 120 per cent rise. Furthermore, because of the agitation to address the issue, this Government was willing to give them a higher rise. We found that to do so, since we had not factored the issue in our budget, we had to find ways of getting some money. We found out that we had at least Kshs0.5 billion. We then went ahead to stop other projects in the Ministry and got a further Kshs1.3 billion, altogether making a total of Kshs1.8 billion. That is the money we were offering this year, to the UASU leadership. That was an average of 15 per cent increase and it is what UASU rejected. I will table this document at the end of this presentation. I want to share with hon. Members here that the minimum increase we had given an assistant lecturer was Kshs80,000 and the maximum was Kshs99,000; a lecturer was given a minimum of Kshs95,000 and a maximum of Kshs120,000; senior lecturer Kshs105,000 and a maximum of Kshs130,000; an associate professor, Kshs126,000 and a maximum of Kshs162,000, and a professor Kshs156,000 and Kshs204,000 as the maximum amount. This is what we offered them. Of course, there are other advantages we have given them. We have a free medical cover, commuter allowance, leave allowance, responsibility allowance, non-practising allowance for doctors who would have had an opportunity to practise and also some of them are consultants, whom my friend Prof. Anyang'-Nyong'o calls \"moonlighting.\" Lecturers have an opportunity to do consultancy. In our system, lecturers have a chance to teach parallel programmes where they get between Kshs45,000 and Kshs50,000. This level of remuneration is the highest in the region. It is the highest compared to Uganda and Tanzania. All the countries neighbouring Kenya do not pay such salaries. In fact, we did a study and found out that we pay our lecturers more than those in the USA, taking into account the purchasing power disparity. We are at par with Canada and we pay more compared to Malaysia, New Zealand and South Africa and we are at par with the United Kingdom. Tanzania is way below us. UASU was requesting for a 700 per cent pay rise. I appreciate that the lecturers need pay rise. However, I am asking the UASU leadership to be aware that, as a Government, we have the responsibility to look into other issues such as HIV/AIDS and increasing the salaries of our teachers. I want to clearly say that, as a Minister, I am willing to have talks and come to an agreement with lecturers. I beg to move. 3410 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES November 2, 2006"
}