uoye non-academic staff embark on indefinite strike

January 10, 2017

Ife Ogunfuwa

The members of staff of Federal University Oye-Ekiti under the aegis of Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and Non-Academic Staff Union have embarked on an indefinite strike over the non-payment of outstanding allowances and two months salary.

It was gathered that the union members’ agitations led by the branch chairman of NASU and branch chairman of SSANU, disrupted academic activities at the institution.

Speaking with our correspondent on Monday, the NASU Branch Secretary,

Ganiyy Afolabi, said that the varsity management had refused to honour an agreement reached with labour unions over five years ago.

According to him, the agreement reached with the unions hinged on the payment of hazard allowances and TETFUND allowance among others.

He said it was only workers in the institution that had yet to receive December salary out of all federal universities in the country.

Afolabi explained that the unions had initially embarked on a seven-day warning strike in 2016.

He said, “The strike began today based on some unattended agitations of the union. By tradition, the university management has been recalcitrant to the agitations of our members. For more than five years, a lot of our workers have not been promoted, the university management finds it difficult to honour the Federal Government and union agreement which encompasses, hazard allowance, N30,000 for the senior staff and N15,000 for the junior staff.

“In the university, there are about four unions and the management honoured only one union’s agreement. The National Association of Academic Technologists is being paid this allowance while others are left unpaid.”

He added, “Due to errors in recruitment, many workers are not being paid. There are situations whereby university graduates are being paid as level 1 or level 2 officers.”

He alleged that the school failed to remit pension, co-operative, union check-offs deductions to the appropriate quarters.

The Public Relations Officer of the institution, Geofrey  Bajji, assured the striking unions that the school management had not reneged on its promise to implement the agreement reached with the unions.

He said, “Most of the union members do not understand how the university system works. The management has not reneged in its desire to implement this agreement.  It desires to implement this agreement, it is just that logistics and some other challenges are slowing the pace. Some of things they are agitating for cannot be generated in a day and the university does not have anything against the workers. There is just a delay in the implementation of the agreement.”