An entrance to the University of Juba | Credit | Eye Radio

Public university lecturers have not been paid salaries for the last eight months, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Juba, Professor John Akec has said.

“We worked for twelve months, we were paid for four months,” Professor  Akec told Eye Radio in an exclusive interview on Saturday after  the university Deans’ Board meeting a day ago.

“We have an outstanding eight months not paid in a year from December last year.”

The Deans’ Board on behalf of the public universities appealed to the ministry of higher education to engage with the finance ministry to clear the arrears.

The five public universities are the University of Juba, Dr. John Garang University of Science and Technology, in Bor, Rumbek University, the University of Bahr El-Ghazal in Wau, and Upper Nile University.

Professor Akech says vice-chancellors of the public universities had on numerous occasions confronted the finance ministry and the ministry of higher education on the matter, but in vain.

He called on the relevant government bodies to expedite the payment of outstanding salaries of public university lecturers.

“If somebody is working and he is not being paid, it means definitely he cannot provide sufficiently for his family. It means that it is going to be difficult for them to carry on teaching while their families are going wild. So that is the challenge.”

According to the new salary structure for public university lecturers approved by the Council of Ministers in July last year, a professor receives over 500,000 SSP and a technician earns over 100,000 SSP per month.

The hard-fought increment was effected in December 2019 following years of complaints by public university lecturers over low pay.

It is a significant increase from the previous salary structure where a professor earned an equivalent of about 150 US dollars per month.