On Sunday, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) stated unequivocally that the University Transparency and Accountability System (UTAS) would replace the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The UTAS, according to ASUU, is still a necessary condition for ending the nationwide strike.
The IPPIS was described as an oppressive yoke by the chairman of ASUU, Federal University, Otuoke, Socrates Ebo, in a statement.
He emphasised that suspending the strike was pointless if the union would go on strike again a few months later.
“Our members cannot continue to suffer and smile under the oppressive yoke of IPPIS,” Ebo said. It’s a pity that under the IPPIS regime, no lecturer at any federal university in the country can say with certainty what his monthly salary is.
“Why should we be squeezing into overcrowded classrooms only to have some white-collar crooks nibble away at our legal pay in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices?”
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“It has to come to an end.” Even the recently paid minimum wage arrears are a source of consternation. Nobody knows how much they were paid or how much they owed them. While the Minister of Labour claims that we were paid three years in arrears plus a 16 percent consequential adjustment, some of us only got nine months. That’s for those who got something at all. About 40 people in my branch (FUO) were not paid at all.
“What can we say we were paid, 9 months or 3 years, in the midst of all this confusion?” It’s a terrible condition, and it’s all due to IPPIS. “We can’t keep going like this.”
The ASUU-FUO chairman noted that an online publication claimed that N16000 was deducted from university lecturers’ salaries every month, and wondered why university lecturers would work so hard in such a difficult economy with such arbitrary deductions.
“UTAS is a fundamental condition.” We can’t keep going in this direction. He went on to say, “Enough is enough.”
