Unijos ASUU Gives Reasons For Embarking On Indefinite Strike

unijos

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Jos chapter on Thursday commenced a “total, comprehensive and indefinite” strike action and blames the management of the institution for the sad development.

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 its promises to the union to rectify many irregularities surrounding payment of entitlements meant for its members.

Flanked by the secretary of the union, Dr. Diran Ademiju-Bepo, Piwune 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.”

According to him, 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.

Unijos ASUU also noted 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. It said that all efforts made in this regard has not yielded desired results.

Another issue raised was the salary disparity between the Unijos ASUU members and those of other federal universities. The union lamented that the Unijos management keeps complaining that there was no money and has continued unnecessary deductions, hence the decision of the union to embark on the strike.

The management of the university, in its reaction, said it got the letter informing it of the indefinite strike, but claimed that ASUU did not state the reason it was embarking on the strike action.

In a statement signed by the Registrar of the university, Mr. Jilli-Dandam, the management, however agreed that the lecturers have been dialoguing on two issues with it; the disbursement of Earned Academic Allowance and the payment of Postgraduate Supervision Allowance.