THE Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) has stated that it is ready to embark on an indefinite strike any moment from now if the hazards being faced by its members on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is not resolved as soon as possible.
Comrade Makolo Hassan, President of NASU stated this yesterday while addressing journalists in Abuja during the union’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting. He said since members of the union migrated to the IPPIS platform, their experience has been very painful.
Comrade Makolo also stated that in addition to the IPPIS hazards, NASU is also not happy with the unfair and unjust sharing of the N40 billion earned allowance paid by the federal government to university based unions. According to him, NASU is ready to take any legitimate action to guarantee fairness, justice and equity in the sharing of earned allowance going forward.
According to Comrade Makolo, all efforts to get the Accountant General of the Federation to redress the shortcomings have up to now not yielded positive results. The shortcomings, he said, include underpayment of salaries, high taxation, delay in payment of salaries and non-payment of promotion arrears among others.
NASU, Comrade Makolo stated, had recently embarked on a 14-day warning strike after which it signed a memorandum of understanding with government on October 20, 2020 where the director of IPPIS was directed to ensure that all the anomalies are corrected within two weeks.
“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 inter-university centres, polytechnics and colleges of education except something is done very urgently to positively remedy the situation,” Makolo said.
On the earned allowances for NASU members, Comrade Makolo stressed: “We are not unmindful of the fact that what the federal government has been doing since 2012 is to release a token to the Non-teaching staff to share from what they have ceded to another group within the system. However, we’ll like to caution that this time around, if in the next release of the earned allowance, our members are short-changed as it was 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.”
