At a time when students in public universities expect the government to be finalising with disbursing Shs 56bn for the striking varsity staff, Keith Muhakanizi, the permanent secretary for ministry of Finance has insisted there is no money.

While being hosted on Capital FM on Saturday, a day when all public universities were expected to open after several postponements, Muhakanizi said: "The supplementary budget money that would be used to pay striking staff was spent on South Sudan rescue mission...and there is no money now."

Striking staff demands Shs 56bn that will cater for enhanced salaries of FY 2016/2017 and arrears of last year

But Muhakanizi had, in his letter dated May 2 to the president and the Public Universities Non-Teaching Staff Executive Forum (Puntsef), agreed that the money was there and would be paid as per the presidential directive.

The President had on Sept 20, 2015, directed that the ministry of Finance should increase salaries and pay arrears of teaching and non-teaching staff in public universities.

However Muhakanizi has now gone further to say that some universities like Makerere were given this money, adding: "By law, each university council should manage its funds."

Puntsef on the other hand accuses Muhakanizi of not respecting the presidential directive and effecting payments according to the consensus note.

"Muhakanizi told us to call off our industrial action in May, promising to pay us our enhanced salaries and arrears effective July 1," said Jackson Betihamah the chairman of Puntsef, on Thursday. " We were patient enough and waited, this time he either pays, or we keep our tools down. We don't mind whether it (strike) lasts three months or more."

CONSENSUS NOTE

According to Betihamah, when the president directed that both teaching and non-teaching public university staff earn the same salary, there arose a task of how to harmonise these salaries so that staff in same salary scales earn equally.

He added that because of this, a consensus note, which clearly shows how much staff in the same salary scale should earn, was computed and given to Finance ministry before the budget was read.

"We knew the government was to spend a lot of money working on this consensus note, but we did it our ourselves and and gave it to Finance ministry and that of Education and sports, and they approved it before reading the budget for this financial year. This means we gave it in on time and there can't be any excuse as to why the money wasn't included in the budget," Betihamah said.

The misunderstanding between government and Puntsef has now seen public universities keep changing opening dates for this academic year. For Makerere, the vice chancellor Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu on Thursday said that the "the university has been closed until further notice".

All the other public universities that include Busitema, Kyambogo Mbarara University of Science and Technology (Must), Gulu, and Makerere University Business School (Mubs) have up to now remained closed since the strike started two weeks back.

Students leaders in these universities on Wednesday gave government a 48-hour ultimatum to have resolved the grievances of Puntsef.

The ultimatum expired on Friday and now they have called upon all students in their respective universities to report on Monday and they stage a strike termed as 'Bloody Monday' to ensure opening of these institutions of higher learning.