By Charly Agwam – Bauchi
Members of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Nigerian University Senior Staff Association and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi regret having agreed to join the IPPIS payment platform for a unexplained deduction from your wages.
They said that university unions, with the exception of the University Academic Staff Union (ASUU), joined IPPIS by mistake, adding that the IPPIS payment platform introduced by the federal government has impoverished them.
JAC President Sulisma Jatau told reporters in Bauchi on Tuesday that members of the two university unions joined the three-day national protest to insist on their demands.
He said: “Three university unions joined IPPIS because they misled us that it is a platform that will eradicate corruption and bring transparency. Later we complained about some irregularities in the platform, and peculiarities in some universities that the payment platform does not capture.
“They promised us that this platform is flexible, that it will cover everything, but to our dismay since we joined, we are now poorer than before. Our wages are deducted unnecessarily. In fact, for the last 11 months, every two months, we see different salaries. More worrying is that we discovered that to correct an anomaly, you have to go to Abuja, which is counterproductive. We now believe that IPPIS is more corrupt than the old system. “
Furthermore, he claimed that they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the federal government on various issues since October 2020, but nothing had been done.
According to him, the issues in dispute between the two unions and the federal government are: inconsistencies in the payment of the Integrated Information and Payroll System (IPPIS), non-payment of earned allowances, non-payment of minimum wage arrears, delay in the renegotiation of agreements FGN / NASU and SSANU 2009 and Non-payment of retirement benefits of exited partners, among others.
“We have waited so long for the federal government to understand our plight. We have to cry out loud to tell the public that we have been let down and that the federal government is not sensitive to our own situation, which is why we are holding this protest to insist on our demands.
“We have so many persistent problems on the ground and as law-abiding unions, we don’t want to disrupt the school calendar, so we want the government to be very proactive in meeting our demands before schools are resumed or otherwise they will not be guilty of anything that happens, “he added.
