ART TEACHERS GET BACK TO CLASSES

Art teachers have returned back to classes following an announcement by the Uganda Teacher’s Union UNATU that it has suspended the industrial action over the issue of salary increment.

The General secretary UNATU Baguma Filbert says they suspended their sit down strike to continue negotiating with government on full filling their 2018 collective bargaining agreement concerning salaries of all categories of teachers.

Unlike other schools like Kitante Hill and Mengo senior secondary school we tried to engage on this issue in vein, kitante primary school social studies teacher Wamboka Vincent said about 66 teachers have resumed teaching pupils and have devised strategies to compensate for the lost time.

However because of the stress and psychological torture teachers have gone through it will take them some time to get to real teaching.

“Of course some have gone back today, others will continue to  move and the teaching will take some time to fully stabilize because the environment is still hostile”The General Secretary UNATU ,Baguma Filbert said

The engagements teachers had with the president left them with no option but to suspend the industrial action in order to continue negotiations with government on full filling their collective bargain agreement.  

“The president was also having a slogan no class no talks so we had to look at both sides either to remain on the industrial action and close the doors of discussion with the president or to resume teaching and then continue with the discussion” Filbert added

UNATU says government is responsible to pay for the lost time of the learners in the last three weeks of their industrial action because it failed to act to its promise.

Filbert further noted that “nobody should blame the teachers for the lost time, it is the responsibility of the government because it took a decision without looking at the consequences”

The leadership of UNATU emphasizes that although their industrial action is not based on government increasing salaries of science teachers but collective bargain agreement that is expiring this financial year, the classroom situation of having teachers highly motivated and others highly demotivated is not good.

These want government to immediately implement the collective bargain agreement which stated a teacher in primary school gets 1.3 million shillings, a diploma holder teaching sciences in secondary gets 3 Million, Diploma teaching Arts gets 2.7 Million while the graduates with bachelors teaching Arts gets 4.5 million and one of sciences 4.8 million.