MINISTER with responsibility for education, youth and information, Karl Samuda, says the fate of unionised members of the academic staff of the University of Technology (UTech), Jamaica, who have been on strike since last Friday, now rests with the University of Technology’s Board and Finance Committee following their rejection of Government’s final offer in the wage dispute yesterday.

The more than 500 unionised staff members pulled their services a week ago after the Government failed to honour a commitment to pay over a portion of retroactive monies owed to them last month under the 2015/17 heads of agreement.

In an effort to temper the situation, which saw students protesting outside the ministry’s corporate area offices on Thursday, the education minister, following a meeting with officials, proposed to pay staff $400 million of the funds owed to them for 2018/19. He said at the time that the ministry had pledged $250 million from its existing budget while the remaining $150 million would be funded by UTech.

“The $400 million is in addition to $1 billion approved for the university in the supplementary estimates approved earlier in October. We have had to comb through the budget and make cuts, at enormous sacrifice, to some of our programmes in order to find these funds. I am appealing to UTech’s academic staff to accept the proposal so classes can resume. Our students must be allowed to continue their education,” Samuda said stressing that this proposal was the best offer that the education ministry could make at the time.

Speaking with the Jamaica Observer on Friday following the rejection of that offer by the University of Technology Academic Staff Union (UTASU), which met earlier in the day with its general membership to consider the proposal, Samuda said it was the final one as far as the ministry was concerned.

“They didn’t come to a commitment to accept the last offer that the ministry placed on the table but there is another proposal now being worked on. The University of Technology’s Board and the Finance Committee are meeting right as we speak to see if it is possible to accommodate the demands arrived at in the meeting today with the union. If they do and find it possible I am sure that Monday they will be off to lectures,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“I wouldn’t discuss that proposal right now until the Finance Committee has decided but, speaking for the Ministry of Education, we have no more money to give them; we have no further funds to allocate to the University of Technology this year and that is categorical,” Samuda insisted.

Asked whether he expected that things would return to normal at the university come Monday, he said: “It is highly likely [that classes will resume with lecturers in place].”

Efforts by the Sunday Observer to get a response from UTASU President Lebert Langley were unsuccessful.

Langley, speaking with the Observer last week, said lecturers were adamant that they would not be pacified by anything below their expectations, given the length of time they have been waiting for the retroactive amounts to be paid to them.