Unima acts on staff pay disparity
The University of Malawi (Unima) has given in to staff demands and removed a 40 percent special allowance given to some College of Medicine (CoM) academic staff.
During a March 29 meeting between Unima Council and university management, it was also resolved that staff in Unima constituent colleges will have a single or unitary salary structure from July this year.
The development comes against a background of a strike by Chancellor College Academic Staff Union (Ccasu) demanding equal pay across all Unima constituent colleges—Chancellor College, CoM, the Polytechnic and Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN)—for equal work done.
Unima sources confided in The Nation that staff who had been benefiting from the 40 percent increments were expected to be given notification letters on the development pending new contracts.
The sources said the meeting also discussed that the Ministry of Health (MoH) should take responsibility of those providing clinical services, and not necessarily Unima.
The decision has also been arrived at, following a Unima conciliation report by private practice lawyer Modecai Msisha who was chosen as an arbitrator in the case.
Unima registrar Benedicto Malunga could not be reached for comment on the issue yesterday, but a memo The Nation has seen from his office dated March 29 2017, Ref: 1/12/7 signed by him said Unima Council invited Ccasu to inform them on the direction taken on their demands.
Reads the memo in part: “Following [Unima] council’s meeting of today, on the conciliation report prepared by Senior Counsel Modecai Msisha, the Unima leadership has been advised to meet with Ccasu so that its leadership can learn about how council intends to respond to the recommendations it has received from the conciliator [that] Ccasu and council agreed to engage at the recommendation of the [Principal] Secretary of Labour, Youth, Sports and Manpower Development.”
Ccasu president Anthony Gunde in an interview yesterday said they were yet to get communication from management on the issue; hence, their strike would continue.
He also said they declined an invitation to a meeting with Unima management on the conciliation report as it only invited Ccasu despite the issue involving all the four constituent colleges.
In his report dated February 22 2017, Msisha provided Unima Council the option to either terminate and claw back supplementation to CoM academic staff not providing clinical services or continue with the erroneous payment of supplementation but award all academic staff 40 percent compensation for equivalent to the supplementation erroneously paid to non qualifying CoM academic staff who have been receiving the supplementation.
In an interview yesterday, Civil Society Education Coalition (Csec) executive director Benedicto Kondowe said the move to terminate the 40 percent salary increment is one step towards resolving the crisis currently being faced in the colleges, but he urged for caution.
