BOFEPUSU notes with concern the protracted strain on Labour relations at the University of Botswana. For several years, the highest institution of learning has embarked on an elongated porocess of restructuring. It is with the greatest regret that we note that this process is marred with a controversy and covert onslaught on workers’ rights. In the end, the purpotted restructuring has not only rendered unsolicited anxiety and apprehension amongst the workers, but has also invited emmense disquiet within the university community generally.
Our affiliates, the UBASSU and NALCGPWU have fervently grappled with a reculcitrant University management in this process. Many decisions of management were clouded with malice and taken under the veil of greatest secrecy. For example, is the mischievious denial of basic information such as the budget allocated towards the end process of restructuring. In contrast, the management solicited a bank loan secured by properties of the institution to finance the process. The new structure remains previleged information, only known the the employer party. This approach marginalised the intergity of the negotiations and rendered the process a sheer mockery. It is also deficient of professionalism and smacks of stealthy underhand tactics that may plunge the university is deeper financial crisis.
It is undesiriable that, the past half a decade the university housed a working community that was wholly uncertain of their fate. Additionally, owing to this prolonged restructuring process, workers have been denied economic freedom. Financial insitutions had placed a moratarium on any form of relationship with the staff members. Yet, albeit this detrimental circumstances, workers are perpertiually expected to place the university at the epic of world of academia.
On ending, in our view, the call to restructure the university is part of greater institutional deficiecies that are engulfing it. These include irrational decision making, poor leadership performance and general lack of regard for efficiency. We call on the university management to introspect on their attitude towards labour relations, to embrace a unitary approach and avoid endless antagonism of workers of the university. We further call, as a matter of urgency, the Minister of Higher Education to address the institutional concerns of university with a view to restore its intergity.
Cde Robert R. Rabasimane
BOFEPUSU Secretary General
