The Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational And Associated Institutions (NASU) on Wednesday threatened to embark on a fulli-blown strike in the universities, inter-university centres, polytechnics, and colleges of education any time of government fails to address challenges in the sector.
President of the union, Mr Makolo Hassan while speaking at the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the Union in Abuja issued a 14 days ultimatum for government to speed up the payment mode of the 12 months arrears or face and industrial action.
“It is no longer news that NASU and some other unions in our tertiary institutions migrated to IPPIS platform in February 2020. This was done after series of meetings between the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, the National Universities Commission (NUC), the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), and the unions. However, the government has failed to live up to its promise of a hitch-free migration. The IPPIS has demonstrated a high level of incompetency and inefficiency.
“Our experience since we migrated to the platform has been a painful one and all our efforts to get Government and the office of the Accountant General of the Federation to redress the noticeable shortcomings have not yielded positive results.
“Some of the shortcomings are non-payment of salaries to some staff, underpayment of salaries, non-payment of approved allowances as contained in 2009 FGN/NASU agreement, failure to pay check-off dues to the union as at when due and non-payment of promotion arrears.
Others are non-deduction of welfare schemes, high taxation, non-release payslips to workers, delay in payment of salaries, and non-release of a schedule of payments made, and others.
“Unfortunately, all that we have done including a 14-day warning strike and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with the government on 20th Oct. 2020 where the Director of IPPIS was directed to ensure that all these anomalies are corrected within two weeks and a special committee headed by the chairman of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission was set up, to deal with the issues of unpaid allowances to our members have failed to yield the desired result.
“In the face of these challenges and lukewarm attitude of the Federal Government and the IPPIS office towards redressing these shortcomings, NASU may have no choice than to embark, as soon as possible, on a full-blown strike in the universities and inter-university centres, polytechnics and colleges of education, except something is done very urgently to positively remedy the situation”.
On the outstanding earned allowances, the union warned that if her members were surcharge in the next release of earned allowance as it was done in 2017 and 2018, ” we will have no choice than to embark on appropriate legitimate action which will guarantee fairness, justice and equity in the sharing of whatever is allocated as earned allowance”.
On insecurity in the country, Comrade Makolo while condemning the slate of killings across Nigeria, blamed the situation on the neglect of equitable distribution of state resources, exploitation of the masses, marginalisation, oppression, victimization as well as nepotism in public administration.
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