Why teachers' strike will flop

trueEliphaz Ssekabira

On September 9, before dropping my two daughters at St Agnes Catholic Girls Primary School, Naggalama for their third term studies, I called the school administration to find out if the teachers at the school will take part in the planned industrial action to press Government to increase their pay by 20%.

They said they will continue with teaching despite the declaration by Uganda National Teachers’ Union (UNATU) for the strike effective September 14.

UNATU has been engaging the Government on several other issues like timely remittance of capitation grants, payment of science teachers allowances, hard to reach allowances, operationalisation of the teachers scheme of service and declaring the World Teachers Day as a public holiday.

 In 2012/2013 Fiscal Year, the Government increased the teachers’ pay by 15% and this was supposed to be further enhanced to 20%, 15% in the Financial Years 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 respectively.

 With due respect to UNATU, I believe the planned industrial action by our teachers in Government schools will flop.

First and foremost, all employees in public service are poorly paid like the enrolled nurses earning sh350,000,   a soldier at the level of the private earning a basic salary of sh330,000, an accounts assistant sh250,000 and a Prison warder and police constable sh300,000.

 Why should teachers want special treatment when other civil servants are also earning peanuts? If the Government succumbs to this pressure, other employees will use this to make demands of salary increase.

The high level of unemployment in the country is another factor which will undermine this industrial action. There thousands of teachers without work but they are available for and seeking employment in the education service.

During the recruitment exercise of over 1500 graduate teachers in 2012, the Education Service Commission received over 30,000 applicants. In fact, there so many teachers who were appointed but have not been posted because there are no vacancies.

The Government should use its apparatus; Resident District Commissioners (RDCs), District Internal Security Officers (DISOs), Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), District Education Officers and Inspectors of Schools and others to do some little intimidation to have our teachers back in classes.

The minister of Education and Sports can even issue a Statutory Instrument to declare that any teacher who absconds from duty for four days will be considered to have resigned from work without notice.

Most teachers are choking with salary loans from the commercial banks with no other source of income. The teachers in this category will not dare to join the strike because they fear deletion from the Government pay roll.

It is also important to note that not all teachers are members of UNATU. It will be worse in schools where head teachers have never subscribed to the national teachers’ association.

The private schools, which pay graduate teachers as low as sh250,000, have opened for the third rendering the strike not attractive to other stakeholders like parents.

The media houses have also been cautious while reporting on this industrial action for fear of being classified as those which sabotage government programmes.

It is true primary teachers get a small take home package ranging from sh300,000-350,000 and their graduate counterparts earning between sh560,00-600,000. Striking will not solve the teachers’ problems. UNATU should call off the strike and should continue to engage the Government in positive way instead of using confrontational approaches and making our pupils to suffer.

The writer is the Station Manager, Namirembe FM 93.9