So do rogue employees!!

I was a lecturer at a local university when Dr Kilemi Mwiria [the MP & Asst Minister] formed UASU during the Moi regime. At a meeting in my university [not KU where Kilemi was], I made a number of enemies when I demanded to be told why we were asking for salary increments.

my colleagues thought I had lost some springs & screws in my head. "Of course we are paid peanuts" they said.

When I asked how they arrived at the "peanuts" conclusion, they said that the cost of living had gone up while our salaries had remained stagnant for almost a decade - apart from the few hundred shillings annual increments.

At that point I retorted: "Your employer is not you social welfare organisation. You don't get paid to meet your expenses; you are paid for the work you do. What you do with the money is up to you".

They came this close -> <- to lynching me! I was kicked out of the meeting and branded a KANU mole.

Now; at that time a lecturer was earning about 25k in a ridiculous arrangement where the basic pay was 11k and the house allowance was 14k. UASU was demanding 50k basic + 20k for housing.

I prepared a memo demonstrating the true worth of a lecturer. I based my argument on the amount of money the universities got per student per year [sh120k at the time]; the number of lecture hours an average student attends in one academic year [600hr]; and the UNESCO recommended student-lecturer ratio [12-to-1].

I further argued that at LEAST 50% of the university funding must go towards teaching and the punched the numbers into a calculator.....

The result was that the fair salary should have been about Sh180k per month. When I present this to my colleagues, they thought it was a joke. Nobody could imagine earning that much at the time!

So I sent the memo to the secretariat that Moi had formed [after declaring UASU illegal]. I don't know what happened to it, but I know that 15 years later, lecturers are still being under-paid [according to the value of the work they do]

Me? I added more effort in my such for an alternative job where I could be paid for my productivity....

PS: My suggestion also took into account that lecturers were over-worked. The stunt-lecturer ration was way above the 12:1 of UNESCO.

So I included a scheme where lecturers would be paid end-of-year bonuses depending on the number of lecture-student-hours they covered above the standard ration in a year.

In that year, my plan showed an average bonus of Sh500k. Mine was Sh380k since I was teaching one of the less popular courses.

There was also a provision that any lecturer with less than the UNESCO figure should be fired at the end of the year.

That's how to manage productivity: hard workers get rewarded, and lazy bones are thrown out.

Unfortunately @Mukiha, since then the lecturers have chosen to do less work to match their little salaries.. In the four years I was in campus, I had at least four lecturers who showed up for less than 3 hours of the required 35 hours in a unit.. One of the lecturers appeared for only 1 hour in a whole semester to give us the answers to the exam he had set... I, like you, was nearly lynched by fellow students for complaining.

What a shame!

Especially when I remember the number of times I went for night lectures [8pm to 10pm] to bridge the gap between the 8-4-4 curriculum and the university one ... for second-year students. I ended up doing 60hrs per semester instead of the required 45hr.

Here is another example of pure stupidity!

http://af.reuters.com/ar...s/idAFJOE6670FE20100708

If they go on strike to mess up South Africa's crowning moment & I was in charge of the Aviation Authority... I would fire them, publish their names s that any employer or patriotic S.African business would never hire them!

LOL... atwoli (the corrupt COTU jester) claims midiwo pays his workers 2,000 per month way below the minimum wage while asking for 1,100,000/- per month salary!

Where is @kadonye to go protest/sue/badger midiwo???

BTW, I hope @kadonye pays his househelp 'fair' wages or at the minimum the minimum wage per the law of the land!

Which billionaire was asked by a reporter why he doesn't drive top-of-the-range cars like his son and replied that his son has a rich father while hi [the billionaire] doesn't?

@mukiha and Vitu,
this is a very enlightening post..what have wendz and guka to add?let's get all the best advise there is in kenya..

...and employees wanting to eat their cake and have it too! [BTW, that's the correct order of this popular saying.... "you can't eat your cake and have it"; makes sense now doesn't it?]

How does one fire a dog?

Hold on; how does one hire a dog.

Truth is dogs don't get fired, because they are never hired!! Therefore, you cannot "be fired like a dog"

My very first boss use to say "let your work be your godfather, and you will never have any problems"