The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has embarked on industrial action with effect from school resumption. The national President of SSANU, Comrade Samson Ugwoke who spoke on behalf of JAC in Abuja disclosed that the leadership of SSANU and NASU were under tremendous pressure by its principals thus, “a strike action has been declared to commence effective from the date of resumption of work after the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown.
“As a responsible union, we have avoided these crises but the irresponsibility of government and its officials have led us to a point where it had become inevitable. If by the time schools are asked to reopen and the needful is not done, it means hope is lost and the earlier avoidable industrial conflict becomes inevitable,” He said.
Ugwoke decried the challenges of short payments of salaries in almost all federal universities, adding that “the audience was that the short payments and mutilated salaries would cease upon enrolment in the scheme.” He stated that assurances were given that “our Earned Allowances that had not been properly captured previously and across all universities would be properly integrated upon enrolment into IPPIS.”
He berated the government noting that since the enrolment of its members into the platform, “it had become a case of ‘from the frying pan to fire’. Our enrollment has turned out o be a complete disaster because of the serious inconsistencies and irregularities currently being witnessed in the payment of salaries and emolument of our members,” he said.
The SSANU President equally alleged of “Unwarranted and inexplicable delays going into the second half of the next month before payment of salaries; haphazard payments leading to non-payment, underpayment, overpayments and multiple payments in some cases; misinterpretation of extant documents on statutory deductions as regard staff salaries and allowances in the university system; non-payment of arrears on new minimum wage; and non-issuance of payslip to workers.”
