Editorial

 

 

Stop this game of chicken

August 15, 2012, 7:15 pm , The Island

Our education system is a shaky pyramid crumbling at both ends––the apex and the base. School education is in crisis. But for a plethora of private tuition classes propping it up it would have collapsed a long time ago. School admissions are an unholy mess. Some schools are being closed down for want of students while others have as many as 60 children crammed into a single classroom. The remedy for alarmingly high failure rates in subjects like mathematics and science at the GCE O/L examination has been to lower the bar! Universities have gone the same way. Bankrupt ultra radical elements bent on disrupting university education and preying on resentful undergrads must be partying. For, the on-going dons' strike has crippled universities.

The government is acting as if there were no university strike. Half-hearted attempts at evolving a solution having failed, both the striking dons and the government have resorted to brinkmanship, so to speak. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has gone on record as saying that he is for a win-win situation, but his Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake remains intransigent and determined to crush the strike. The government is waiting till university teachers blink and vice versa. They want to wear each other down.

The on-going tussle between the Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA) and the government is a classic example of the game of chicken––a contest where neither party is prepared to yield, according to the mathematical Game Theory even at the risk of mutually assured destruction. The university strike is getting unnecessarily protracted. If it drags on indefinitely, which is likely to be the case at this rate, the country will be the loser. Unless the government cares to ensure the smooth functioning of universities, it might as well forget about its ambitious plan to make Sri Lanka the Knowledge Hub of Asia.

The FUTA has, no doubt, bitten off more than it can chew. But, the government must not make the mistake of treating university teachers like a bunch of terrorists and trying to walk all over them. Many of the strikers, it may be recalled, threw their weight behind President Rajapaksa at the last presidential election. The government ought to soften its stand and make a genuine effort to solve the problem. The same goes for university teachers who are intelligent enough to realise that trade unionism is the art of the possible and a labour dispute must not be turned into a zero-sum game if it is to be settled. Ideally, a country must spend at least 6 per cent of its GDP on education, but that target cannot be achieved overnight. Similarly, pay hikes given to one category of state workers usually have a domino effect across the public sector rife with salary anomalies. Therefore, the university dons must be flexible and realistic, though they deserve the salaries they are demanding.

The government cannot claim that it lacks funds to pay university teachers higher salaries. It is never cash-strapped when it comes to purchasing state-of-the-art choppers in peace time, building domestic airports, paying PAYE tax of certain categories of state workers to the tune of Rs. 2 billion per annum, bidding for mega sports events like the Commonwealth Games and holding ego-boosting, fund guzzling carnivals. Therefore, it must be able to save some funds being splurged on useless ventures to grant university teachers a substantial pay hike without playing tricks on them. Its claim that Sri Lanka's total spend on education already amounts to 6 per cent of GDP is ludicrous, to say the least. It has taken into account even expenditure incurred by some temples on vocational training in arriving at that figure! Minister Dissanayake should stop bandying about figures he does not understand.

The striking dons' demand that they be consulted when important decisions on universities are made could easily be granted as they have a crucial role to play in such matters. What is preventing the government from agreeing, in principle, that 6 per cent of GDP should be allocated for education and undertaking to work towards that end? We think it is the sheer arrogance of power.

Education is the only hope for a small country that lacks physical resources. Sri Lanka is badly in need of better schools and universities that conform to international standards. The government must step up investment in the education sector in order to export knowledge to the developed world instead of unskilled labour to West Asia. Else, it should seriously consider training the country’s children to grow bananas for western multinationals like Dole, which has already commenced its operations here.

Thankfully, Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, a good listener, has been entrusted with the task of negotiating with the striking dons. It is hoped that they will stop the game of chicken forthwith, make compromises and find a solution. And fast!