FG owes our members 15 months’ salaries___ ASUU laments

The leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has lamented on Sunday that the federal government is owing some of its lecturers 15 to 16 months’ salaries.

Moreso, the union added that lecturers mostly affected are those who went on sabbatical. Though, the claim could not be verified last night.

The varsity teachers accused Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) of deliberately frustrating the lecturers to a point of desperation in order to capture them on the controversial Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) of the government.

Recall that ASUU’s continued rejection of the existing payroll system has led to the introduction of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS). It was developed by the university lecturers.

Speaking with newsmen, ASUU president Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi said OAGF refusal to pay his colleagues amounted to a violation of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) ASUU signed with the government last December before it called of its nine month strike.

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“Our members are still being owed. We are still tracking the payment; the have been done in bits but as at today we still have some of our members, pockets of our members on our campuses that are not yet paid.

“In fact some of our members have not been paid their salaries for 15 – 16 months. We have members who have not been paid for fifteen to sixteen months. Some of them who went on sabbatical they don’t pay them and they are pushing them to the point of desperation, as a way of capturing them on IPPIS.

“We see that as a violation of our Memorandum of Action which was signed in December, 2020: that our members will be paid their salaries through hybrid platform until we finalise the integrity test on UTAS.

“What the consultant to IPPIS has been doing is to instigate the Accountant-General’s office to threaten our members that they will not be paid if they don’t register on IPPIS. Those of our members who made inquiries and went as far as Office of the Accountant- General of the Federation they told them point blank that they will not be paid unless they register on IPPIS.

“We are collating information on that and we are prepared to take it to the highest level in the land before we consider what is to be done about what the AGF and the consultant on IPPIS are doing to our members.

“Denying workers their salaries is a punishment and it violates all known trade union laws that we know. If people can be denied their salaries for fifteen to sixteen months because they don’t want to succumb to the pressure (of registering on IPPIS), our union will consider the best way to handle them after taking everything to all the appropriate levels.