There was evidence, yesterday, that the insistence by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to be paid for the six months that the strike has lasted was affecting negotiations between the two feuding parties in an apparent allusion to the Federal Government’s ‘no-work-no-pay’ policy.
Precisely, the current administration maintained that it would not bow to the “whims and caprices” of the university lecturers, who are requesting payment of outstanding salaries, to check future and needless strikes.
Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, announced that President Muhammadu Buhari rejected it outright when he presented the report to him.
At the ministerial media briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Adamu submitted: “All contentious issues between government and ASUU had been settled except the quest for members’ salaries for the period of a strike to be paid, a demand that Buhari has flatly rejected.”
He said the President’s position had been communicated to the lecturers, who are being awaited to call off the strike.
The minister claimed the union was yet to indicate a willingness to end the industrial action, adding that the rejection was to curb excesses of trade unions.
He lamented that despite trillions of naira already expended by the government on the education sector, the university-based unions have continued to maintain a hard position.
The minister hinted that ASUU had begun consultation with members to come up with its next line of action.
Adamu said the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) and University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) outscored the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) during an integrity test, affirming that ASUU’s peculiarities would be accommodated in whatever platform that might be adopted.
The minister added that IPPIS had been updated to accommodate payment of those on sabbatical, even as he debunked reports that UTAS had not been approved by the government as the payment platform for the lecturers.
Source: This Day
