The University of Botswana may lose gains it made in its localization drive because lecturers’ salaries are not keeping up with their growing workload ÔÇô Education Minister, Jacob Nkate told Parliament this week.
“The university localization programme, which has so far produced a commendable number of senior academic staff, is under threat from lack of competitiveness in emoluments and heavy teaching loads. The university emoluments package has steadily been eroded by the loss of such benefits as the education allowance, car allowance and housing subsidy. Teaching loads have, however, been increasing exponentially over the years rendering the university unattractive both locally and internationally.
The minister was answering questions from Palapye MP, Boyce Sebetela, who had asked about the number of Batswana senior lecturers, associate professors and professors in each of the faculty at the University of Botswana as at December 31, 2006.
Sebetela further asked the minister to provide the same information for non citizen senior lecturers, associate professors and professors and state whether he was satisfied with the number of citizen position holders, relative to that of non citizens; and if not, to say what he was doing to improve the situation.
