The resumption of studies at Chancellor College \u2014 a constituent college of the University of Malawi (Unima)\u2014remains uncertain as academic staff are not pleased with how the Unima council is resolving the salary disparity stand-off.<\/p>\n
The development also follows a meeting yesterday that the Students\u2019 Union of Chancellor College (Succ) had with the college management and Chancellor College Academic Staff Union (Ccasu) to find out what is holding up the opening of the college.<\/p>\n
Succ president, Sylvester James, described the meeting as fruitless.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing that was been discussed offers hope that the strike would end any time soon. What we want is the college to open soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
James said the students would still go ahead with plans to hold demonstrations to force the academic staff and the management to resolve the matter expeditiously.<\/p>\n
The salary disparity wrangle has seen lecturers at the college going on strike for a month now.<\/p>\n
The saga centres on an observation that some academic staff at the College of Medicine (COM) earn better salaries than others within the university.<\/p>\n
Previously, the arrangement was that academic staff at COM who rendered clinical services to hospitals owned by the Ministry of Health would be paid 40 percent top-up allowance as compensation for the extra work beyond their academic duties.<\/p>\n
But, according to a report by a conciliator, lawyer Modecai Msisha, who was asked to come up with recommendations on the stand-off, some academic staff at COM were receiving supplementary salaries without providing clinical services in public hospitals.<\/p>\n
Among others, he recommended that these employees be removed from the supplementary list and pay back the money.<\/p>\n
The Unima Council has opted for this recommendation, but the academic union is not pleased with.<\/p>\n
In an interview on Tuesday, Ccasu president, Anthony Gunde, said the college would only open when the matter has been fully resolved.<\/p>\n
A taskforce comprising members from the Ccasu, the Polytechnic Academic Staff Welfare Committee, Kamuzu College of Nursing Staff Welfare Committee and COM Staff Welfare Committee has been set up to meet the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were asked to come up with a taskforce that would meet the council to iron out differences on how the recommendations by Modecai Msisha will be implemented for the benefit of both parties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to Gunde, the council will meet with the taskforce this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are asking that both the academic staff union and the management sit down and consider all options, merits and demerits, then collectively come up with a workable one. We do not want a situation where we commence work before the dispute is over and are forced to close again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The resumption of studies at Chancellor College \u2014 a constituent college of the University of Malawi (Unima)\u2014remains uncertain as academic staff are not pleased with how the Unima council is resolving the salary disparity stand-off. The development also follows a meeting yesterday that the Students\u2019 Union of Chancellor College (Succ) had with the college management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44695,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44686\/revisions\/44695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}