Lecturers' strike is baseless - Buea University VC

Nalova Lyonga , Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea, UB, has said that they are grappling with security challenges on campus, reason why taxis have been banned from circulating within UB campus.

She was reacting to a notice by lecturers of the university calling for a “four-day warning strike action”. Nalova has described the strike action that enters the fourth day this Monday, May 26, as baseless.

On Wednesday May 21, the National Union of Teachers of Higher Education (SYNES) UB chapter, embarked on a four- day warning strike “to protest against inhuman and degrading conditions they say they have been subjected to in the past year. The lecturers say they have been subjected to compulsory trekking under very harsh weather conditions from the university gate to their offices and lecture halls.”

The Vice-Chancellor had banned taxis from entering the campus, in the wake of student unrest in 2013. She is arguing that renegade students were using taxis to enter the campus, commit crimes and get away unscathed.

“The prohibition of taxis from circulating on Campus [was] for security reasons; ranging from abduction, disruption of examinations, kidnapping of students based on their religious beliefs and the transportation of non-students hired to promote riots on campus,” a communiqué from the Vice-Chancellor reads in part.

The lecturers have, however, argued that the strike long ended and with taxis banned on campus, theft and other forms of crime have been recurrent, and so, “the administration should immediately allow taxis to transport staff and students into campus.”

The lecturers are striking at a time when the administration has already contracted with a company to provide transport buses for the campus. They will go from Molyko Check Point through Malingo to UB Main Campus and from Campus B (Bomaka) to the main campus. Students will pay FCFA100 for one drop from the initial pick-up points and FCFA 50 from the main gate of the University. The lecturers say the company, Bajo Club, through its manager complained that they were in financial difficulties (even before starting the business) and could not deliver services before the end of May.

“A small committee which was set up to look into the matter proposed that Bajo Club be given enough time to prepare and effectively start in September so as to resolve all problems they might have by then. In the mean time, taxis could resume transportation to UB so that the rest of the semester can run on smoothly. The administration refused because the same Bajo Club which was two months behind schedule promised to do it,” a message from the SYNES secretariat reads. As the tension between the lecturers and the administration ensued, the Vice-Chancellor signed yet another communiqué.

“In reference to a strike notice from SYNES-UB Chapter calling for a strike as from Wednesday, May 21, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea informs all staff and students that the motive for the strike is baseless and they should remain calm and follow their studies diligently,” she writes.

The V.C’s communiqué goes on to state that “the case raised by SYNES relating to the ban of taxis on campus is an administrative issue addressed by the Vice-Chancellor in her notice No. 2014/0059/UB/VC, of 14 May relating to the commencement of a campus shuttle service starting at the end of May 2014 for a trial period of three months, after which the service shall be reviewed and improved, if necessary.”

Reacting to the communiqué from the Vice-Chancellor, Fontem Neba said “This public stance which seeks to discredit a legitimate claim might only end up undermining the VC’s ability to speak the truth even once.”

Neba holds that the administration has remained insensitive to their problems. “The Vice-Chancellor has remained arrogant, spiteful, defiant and chillingly contemptuous of her colleagues. To make a bad situation worse, the incessant lies the administration has been telling have attained pathological proportions. The last in the series is the claim that taxis were banned because they were used to kidnap students based on their religious beliefs. This imagination of Boko Haram is a familiar modus operandi designed to justify a witch-hunt.”

On day one of the strike action, a fierce Rapid Intervention Squad was stationed outside the campus, probably waiting to swoop down on any violent action SYNES might have planned to take.

Despite calls by the Vice-Chancellor for the collaboration of everyone to promote peace as the academic year moves to an end, Fontem Neba, Secretary of SYNES-UB chapter said “the strike is expected to continue till Monday May 26 after which SYNES-UB will evaluate the administration’s readiness to facilitate their working conditions or how far she is prepared to go in her war against her colleagues.”