By CYRUS OMBATI  and AUGUSTINE ODUOR

Learning in all public universities is set to resume after university lecturers and allied workers signed a return-to-work agreement with the Government.

This is after the Government offered Sh7.8 billion towards their salary raise.

University Academic Staff Union (Uasu) and the Universities Non-Teaching Staff Union (Untensu) said the figure translates to a 33 per cent salary raise and 14.2 per cent rise on house allowances.

Higher Education minister Margaret Kamar asked lecturers to report to their stations immediately and noted that more study time should not be lost.

This happened as a planned demonstration by University of Nairobi students to push for better pay for their striking lecturers turned bloody as they robbed, blocked and stoned motorists and pedestrians.

Scores of people were injured in the chaos that lasted almost two hours stalling traffic along the busy Uhuru Highway. The students planned to march to Ministry of Higher Education offices at Jogoo House to register complaints that they have not been taught for almost two weeks.

Lazy decision

They started their protests at the main campus and on reaching the University Way/Uhuru Highway roundabout they turned rowdy.

Police had to use teargas canisters to disperse the students who also stoned some road users and placed boulders on the road.

Uhuru Highway was turned into a battle zone for a while before police overpowered the students and drove them to their campus hostels later in the afternoon.

The students said they wanted to push the Government to listen to the lecturers’ demands and that they had been idle for long. “Why does the Government pay Permanent Secretaries a lot of money and leave out lecturers and teachers who are doing much in this country,” shouted some of the protestors.

Thursday, Prof Kamar said the Government had offered to pay the money in two phases of Sh3.9 billion starting next January and the balance paid by July the same year.

“The first phase will be paid this financial year through the supplementary budget. The next phase shall be settled in the 2013/14 budget,” she said.

Kamar said the unions and the Government were in agreement that all the arrears should be paid ahead of another bargaining agreement that is slated to start mid next year.

She said the Cabinet subcommittee meeting placed the offer after acknowledging that the lecturers’ and university workers’ grievances were genuine.

The development came a few days after the Government through the Inter Public Councils Consultative Forum offered a 0.5 per cent salary increment for the lecturers that they said translated to Sh200 raise per month.

It also comes after university lecturers and allied workers rejected the Cabinet proposal last week that they return to work, terming it a lazy decision. The two unions had faulted the Government’s move to award a 400 per cent salary increase to university executives and demanded that their pay be halted until all salaries are restructured.

Uasu Secretary General Muga K’Olale and Dr Mukhwaya said the university vice chancellors currently take home at least Sh1.3 million every month yet the workers earn peanuts.