NUL workers want Mosito out

MASERU-National University of Lesotho (NUL) employees want the Acting Vice Chancellor Professor Kananelo Mosito to resign.
The workers say Professor Mosito cannot serve both the university and the Court of Appeal where he is its president.

“We note with serious concern that the Vice-Chancellor’s simultaneous engagement both at NUL and the Lesotho Court of Appeal adversely impacts the VC’s efforts in the discharge of his duties,” said the workers in the letter they handed to Justice Mosito yesterday.
They complain that he didn’t pay attention to his duties at this time when the supplementary examinations and the graduation ceremonies had to be conducted online.

“Both these tasks require an undivided attention of the Vice-Chancellor as the chief accounting officer of the NUL,” they said.
“In the converse case, the VC’s continued absence from his duty at NUL during critical periods in its almanac of events while discharging his judicial duties in Maseru negatively impacts service-delivery at NUL.”
“We, therefore, demand the immediate resignation of the Vice-Chancellor from the VC’s post in his acting capacity.”

The workers also complain that the online teaching and learning, “which was arbitrarily imposed on staff and students alike without due consultations, has egregiously failed to produce the desired end-results”.
They say the Thuto Portal, which both staff and students in many cases were unable to access, has proved to be functionally and administratively confused, to the extent that some examinations were either not written according to the timetable or were written at a later time or date, or worse still, not written by some students at all.

They say the online programme at NUL was introduced from a top-down vantage point rather than from a bottom-up perspective.
“The online programme continues to bring more harm than good to staff and students alike,” the letter reads.

The workers say students are unable to process their National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) loan agreements because the online registration is not considered by the NMDS as a valid and acceptable proof of registration.
“Teaching and learning is a mess, for example, the online learning has become a fertile ground for plagiarism, which tarnishes the image of our institution.”

Another complaint is that the staff promotions criteria are “innately unjust and discriminatory”.
They say this resulted from differential and discriminatory treatment among staff members who had applied for promotion since 2018.
The university management, they say, has selectively chosen to promote certain members among colleagues retrospectively with full pay while in some cases, some equally deserving fellow staff members had been promoted but had to forfeit payment of certain years within their promotion threshold.

“These discriminatory practices by the NUL management equally extend to our fellow non-academic staff members,” they say.
“The members of the NUL Community openly decry this overt violation of their basic employment rights. As the members of the NUL Community, we, therefore, categorically demand the VC and NUL Management to facilitate the redress of these inequalities evident in the manner of treatment among NUL employees.”

They demand that the management should consider a five percent inflation adjustment retrospective from the end of July, 2020 for all NUL employees.
“In this regard, Mr Vice Chancellor, we, the workers, are categorically saying that there is no proper vaccine for this economic malady, except to adjust their salaries.”

The other grievance is that there is incomplete payment of salary increments for non-academic staff, which is an age-old case that began in 2002.
It went to the Labour Appeals Court in Maseru, was sent back to NUL for complete settlement but almost 19 years down the line, “there are still no positive results to that effect”.
The workers say with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic the “management has demonstrated no serious interest and ability to respond to the challenges presented by the scourge”.

“The management remained, and still remains, aloof and inactive.”
They say there are no sound Covid-19 safety measures for the NUL employees and students in relation to how they should protect themselves from exposure to the coronavirus disease, “particularly basing ourselves on the different types of work we perform and the ways in which we interact with our clients (predominantly students) at work”.

“In this regard, the NUL management has palpably failed to devise or adapt infection control strategies based on a thorough Covid-19 risk assessment and safe work guidelines aimed to reduce or minimize the risk of occupational exposure and infection among NUL employees and students,” they said.

Staff Reporter