THE National University of Lesotho (NUL) was this week plunged into fresh turmoil yet again as lecturers and non-academic staff joined hands in protest over the ongoing restructuring exercise.
A petition submitted to NUL vice-chancellor Sharon Siverts by the Non-Academic Workers’ Union (Nawu) yesterday said the workers were concerned with the “uncertainty and instability” that is prevailing at the university as a direct result of the restructuring exercise.
The union accused the NUL management of acting in bad faith as it carried out the exercise.
It also accused the management of adopting a unilateral approach in handling the sensitive issue.
They demanded the immediate suspension of the restructuring exercise and urged management to explore what the union called “all reasonable means to avoid retrenchment”.
They also demanded that the chairman of the NUL council should “stop micro-managing NUL” and confine his business to running the university council.
We think these demands are unfortunate.
For a start we think the current restructuring exercise, painful as it will be, is inevitable.
That workers were going to lose their jobs should have been obvious the moment Siverts spoke about realigning the university’s degree programmes in line with Lesotho’s modern demands.
We see the strike action as a reflex response to Siverts’ plan to cut jobs as part of that curriculum shake-up.
It is not that we are rubbing our hands in glee. We feel for the workers who will lose their jobs. Any loss of jobs in a country with high levels of unemploymentsuch as ours should be seen as tragic.
However, the reasons behind the restructuring exercise far outweigh whatever personal discomforts individual workers have to bear.
The exercise is a fairly noble one.
It must be allowed to proceed if we are to have a university worth that name and that is relevant in the 21st century.
By taking their battle to the streets and fighting against the restructuring exercise the NUL community appears to have completely lost the plot.
We also think they are merely delaying the inevitable. If they refuse to co-operate the exercise must be allowed to proceed, with or without their consensus.
We all want to see NUL being transformed into a modern university that can be able to meet the peculiar challenges of our modern times.
But the university will not realise its massive potential if we allow individuals with narrow, selfish interests to stand in the way of progress.
The workers’ narrow interests must pave way to the greater interests of the majority.
We also expected that with the appointment of Siverts as vice-chancellor earlier this year all individuals at NUL would bury the hatchet and pull in the same direction to haul the university from the mud.
The latest flare-up at NUL comes at a time when we thought the university was now on the up. We felt there was a buzz at the university with everyone determined to give the final push to make that place work.
We are therefore extremely disappointed that things appear to be going back to that old past.
We think the current stand-off at NUL is also a huge PR disaster for the university which had gone on a charm offensive to convince stakeholders that such strikes would now be a thing of the past.
As we have argued in previous editorials we think these strikes do little to correct the university’s battered image.
Under the circumstances Siverts might find herself under tremendous pressure from a hostile workforce to cave in.
But we have one message for her: she must not give up!
Siverts must realise that she has a battle on her hands if she is to turn around the fortunes of the university.
Quitting at this moment will mean the university will remain stuck in a rut.
She must stay the course.
