Public university lecturers across Kenya have officially begun a nationwide strike, demanding that the government honour and implement the 2025–2029 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Speaking during the strike at Maseno University on Friday, Kenya Universities Staff Union (KUSU) Maseno branch secretary Pius Stephen Opiyo said lecturers had exhausted their efforts to have the government negotiate, sign and implement the agreement.
Opiyo said one of their key demands is for lecturers’ salaries to be paid directly from the National Exchequer, arguing that their remuneration should not be tied to student numbers or the financial capacity of individual universities.
He criticised the government’s implementation of the student-centred funding model, saying it had created a situation where universities’ ability to pay lecturers could depend on the number of students enrolled and the fees received.
“We have come together to demand that the government considers the negotiation, signing and implementation of the 2025–2029 CBA. In this CBA, we are demanding that the government ratify our demand to have our salaries paid directly from the Exchequer,” Opiyo said.
He said lecturers were public servants and should not be treated like Board of Management (BOM) teachers in secondary schools whose salaries depend on fees paid by students.
“We will not accept to be turned into BOM teachers in high schools who depend on fees paid by students. We are public staff, and therefore we are demanding that the government pay our salaries directly from the Exchequer,” he said.
Opiyo also called for the harmonisation of lecturers’ allowances, saying university staff should benefit from schemes available to other public sector employees, including car and mortgage financing programmes.
He further demanded a review of basic salaries and housing allowances, citing what he described as a 10 per cent salary increment awarded to civil servants in July.
“As a union, we want to declare that our strike is commencing today. Until the government honours the requests we have given, we are not going to call it off,” Opiyo said.
Meanwhile, UASU Maseno branch chairman Dr. K’otuto George said the 2025–2029 CBA was expected to have been concluded before June 2025 and implemented from July that year.
Kotuto said unions began pushing for negotiations in 2024 when they signed the previous 2021–2025 CBA.
He recalled that lecturers went on strike in November last year, after which a return-to-work formula provided for the signing of a new CBA within 30 days.
However, he said nearly a year later, the agreement had yet to be signed and implemented.
“The 2025–2029 CBA should have been signed before June 2025 to take effect in July 2025. We asked for these negotiations in 2024 when we signed the 2021–2025 CBA,” K’otuto said.
He said the union had rejected the Sh9.76 billion offer proposed by the government, arguing that it amounted to only a three per cent increase and was inadequate to meet lecturers’ demands.
Dr. K’otuto maintained that lecturers would not return to classrooms until the CBA was signed, registered in court and fully implemented.
“The Sh9.76 billion is too little; it is only three per cent. It came after we had already issued the strike notice. We will negotiate while we are out of the classrooms,” he said.
He insisted that the strike would continue until the government takes concrete steps towards resolving the dispute.
