Makerere University, Uganda's biggest and oldest academic institution, reopened on Saturday, 54 days after the University Council closed it due to a lecturer strike over pay.

Lectures, registration of students and issuance of identity cards which were disrupted by the strike, will resume on Monday, according to a statement from the University Council which is the supreme governing body of institutions.

"We are ready and I hope all the lecturers will be in lecture theatres on Monday," Kiggundu Musoke, spokesperson for Makerere University Academic Staff Association, was quoted by Daily Monitor on Saturday as saying.

The university was closed on November 12 after lecturers declined to resume work unless the government fulfilled a salary increment pledge that President Yoweri Museveni had endorsed in April 2004.

The university staff insisted that a professor's basic salary should be raised to 2.8 million Ugandan shillings (1500 U.S. dollars) while a teaching assistant, the lowest in rank of the academic staff would earn 1.2 million shillings (650 dollars).

The strike paralyzed activities at the university, forcing the University Council to temporarily close the institution.

On December 20, a general assembly of the academic staff agreed to end the longest strike in the institution's history of 84 years, after the University Council proposed what it called a professional allowance of 500,000 shillings (270 dollars) for a professor.

Source: Xinhua