University of Zambia Students Union (UNZASU) President Martin Muyuya says government should facilitate negotiations between the Ministry of Education and the University of Zambia Lecturers and Researchers Union (UNZALARU) to reach a consensus on the current stand-off involving unpaid academic staff dues.
Mr Muyuya said the negotiations should give a clear roadmap on how the government is going to ensure that it pays the K350 million owed to the academic staff.
The academic staff at UNZA staged a work protest last month demanding payment of outstanding dues owed by the institution and have since resolved to withhold the results for the students until they are paid their money.
Mr Muyuya told ZANIS in an interview in Lusaka today that prolonging to resolve the matter clearly showed that government is not prioritizing issues affecting the education sector in the country.
Mr Muyuya added that UNZASU will ensure that academic studies are not being disturbed at the highest learning institution in the country.
The UNZASU president said if government can invest in education it will have made great achievements in terms of national development and human resource.
He added that UNZASU felt that the government should ensure that students are not disturbed in any way and return to the University on 4th October, failure to which the Union will do what they can to make sure that students are on campus by then.
He added that government must understand that UNZA is the highest learning institution in Zambia and expects it to give the institution the attention it deserves.
He assured the First year students that UNZA will open on 4th October, 2015 without fail.
“My humble appeal on behalf of the students is that the government should ensure that education is their first priority’’, said Muyuya.
He noted that for the lecturers to work they need to be motivated and get their benefits just like the those working in government and called upon the government through Ministry of Education to ensure that negotiations are completed as soon as possible.
Martin, are you aware that the same lecture union we are backing are advocating for the increament of tution fees at the institution? if not, look for rhe first press interveiw Dr. Chiputa hard on this issue, where he said us students at unza are not paying the market price and therefore govwrnment should conaider increasing. Another thing Mr. President I would like you to make me understand is the so called “excess teaching hours allowances”, because we have seen lectures that. willingly abush and miss lecture with no excuse, others out of 30 to 36 lectures in a given term only teach half, others mainly fail to teach through the course outlines. So helps some of us students where extra teaching hours come about and the criteria used before we help them blindly in stealing from us…