The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says the
federal government has been “amputating” lecturers’ salaries with the
Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
In an interview with The Punch, Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU
president, said the federal government paid lecturers who were not registered
on the IPPIS without capturing their biometrics and other information.
In March, the federal government ordered stoppage of
salaries of lecturers and all workers in tertiary institutions who are not
enrolled in the IPPIS.
Some lecturers, who were not on IPPIS, threatened to embark
on strike if they did not receive their salaries, but they were later paid.
ASUU rejected the federal government’s directive for workers
to enroll in the centralised payroll system, saying it would affect the
autonomy of universities.
In April, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the immediate
payment of the withheld salaries of February and March for lecturers in federal
universities who have not registered on the IPPIS.
But the ASUU president said the payment process was not
straightforward.
“The first comment is that we wondered how they could have
used the IPPIS platform when our members didn’t submit BVN or sign into IPPIS.
The impression we were given before is that before the government could use
IPPIS, people must submit themselves for data capture, biometrics capture and
so forth. But that did not happen in this instance,” Ogunyemi said.
“So if the government could go ahead and use the IPPIS to
pay salaries, it means our suspicion is being confirmed which means they can
manipulate that platform as they want. This is because if people who did not
register on IPPIS are being paid through IPPIS, it means that anybody can be
imported into that system and that has been our suspicion all along. We have
said that the IPPIS is not waterproof as claimed.
“Secondly, by using IPPIS to pay our members (because in the
alert, it was clearly stated there; the IPPIS was mentioned in the alert) we
have also seen the inadequacies of that platform. When the government called us
for a meeting in July 2019, it said all the fears had been addressed. How come,
this time around, by using the IPPIS, you distorted people’s salaries?
“Our members are saying the government amputated their
salaries. They removed from some people’s salaries. The pay slips are nowhere
and the cooperative deductions, union dues and all the third party deductions
are nowhere to be found. You now start to wonder whether this is the system we
need.
“As we have been saying, the alternative we have been
working on is in progress and we will soon unveil it to Nigerians.”
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com