Seriki Adinoyi in Jos
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Jos chapter, which commenced a “total, comprehensive and indefinite” strike on Thursday, has provided reasons for its action that has paralyzed the academic activities in the institution.
Unijos branch Chairman of ASUU, Dr Christopher Piwune, while addressing the press on Saturday, said the university management was deliberately shying away from its responsibilities and has severally reneged on the promises it had repeatedly made to the union to rectify many irregularities surrounding payment of entitlements meant for its members.
Piwune, who was flanked by the secretary of the union, Dr Diran Ademiju-Bepo, recalled that the trouble started shortly after the six month ASUU nation-wide strike in June 2013; the federal government released money for staff’s welfare and NEEDS assessment, but this money was misappropriated by the university.
He said the university went ahead to disburse the fund arbitrarily to academic and non-academic staff with about 300 members of his union not getting paid. “We have had several meetings with the management of the university on the issues; the university said some of our members were over paid and started deducting from their salaries, and even got to the point that members’ salaries were being over-deducted, yet the university was not paying those that were short-changed.”
ASUU also observed that the university has refused to pay postgraduate entitlements to its members that have supervised Masters and PhD students with over 100 applications still waiting to be attended to. Adding that all effort made in this regard has not yielded desired results.
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