Sri Lankan University Teachers Problems Solve within few Days

Sri Lanka Higher Education Ministry has taken steps to solve the university lecturers’ problems soon, Higher Education Minister S B Dissanayake said at a function held Lake House. Though he said problem will solve within few days, did not mentioned the ways and how ministry is going to solve the problem.

“Currently the issues facing university academics are identified and successfully sorted out. Within few days’ time, we will come up with a balanced solution. This solution will help to enhance the progress of the university system in Sri Lanka” minister expressed.

Not only Higher Education Ministry, but, also Education, Youth Affairs and Skills Development, Economic Development and Social Services Departments are taking part to assist and facilitate higher education sector in Sri Lanka.

University teachers union, FUTA is demanding from government to allocate 6 percent of the country's GDP for education, grant independence of universities from political interferences and an increase in salaries for university teachers by 20 percent.

University teachers in Sri Lanka started their strike on July 04 and due to strike all the activities of university were paralyzed and about 70,000 undergraduate students suspended the academic activities and affected the examination of universities.

Earlier Minister Dissanayake said “Suspected political agendas are behind the trade union action by FUTA to create a political crisis leading to regime change”. “Government took every possible effort to resolve the matter through negotiations”.

 “We had around 10 discussions and exchanging of letters, drafts of MoU etc and still the FUTA has not agreed to resolve this matter amicably due to some unknown reasons which may be mainly due to political reasons” he said.