The Chancellor College Academic Staff Union (Ccasu) has planned to engage authorities to negotiate salary increments.
Ccasu, fresh from their successful fight for academic freedom last year, have had meetings at the campus in old Malawi’s capital, Zomba, strategising how to approach the issue.
Newly appointed Ccasu president Sunduzwayo Madise confirmed in an interview on Wednesday that Ccasu held meetings and they intend to approach authorities on the matter.
Said Madise: “We are still discussing to see how we can resolve this. We want to go into negotiations [with government] and we will engage stakeholders.â€
Madise, however, dismissed reports that the lecturers were planning a strike, arguing they can’t do that before negotiations.
Meanwhile, University of Malawi (Unima) registrar Benedicto Malunga has written a memo to the university staff, informing them that in 2012/13 annual subvention, Unima has been allocated an amount K584 million (about $2.3 million) less than what it got in the 2011/12 financial year.
In the memo, dated July 19 2012, Malunga states that the university management wrote Treasury on May 29 2012, with a copy to Ministry of Education, Science and Technology on the need to revise upwards the budgetary ceiling given to Unima from K5 882 952 500 to K13 051 304 054.
Mwadiwa, who acknowledged receiving the letter in an interview on Wednesday, said the issues Unima raised (budget revision) could not be handled by Ministry of Finance alone.
He said the national budget was passed and issues of budgetary revisions would have to be presented to Cabinet for consideration.
The Unima letter suggests that the revised budget would help to meet increased staff salaries in response to the feedback the Unima received from the colleges and how the two recent devaluations could be cushioned with an upward salary adjustment.
