Chris Ngige,
minister of labour and employment, says the federal government lost N800
billion to the old system in which university lecturers were being paid — before
the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) was introduced.
Ngige, who spoke
with Journalists at his Alor home in Idemili South local government area of
Anambra state on Sunday, averred that there would be no going back in paying lecturers
with the IPPIS.
According to him,
the introduction of the IPPIS has brought an end to the various irregularities
that characterised the old system in which university lecturers were being
paid.
The minister alleged
that the reaction of the Academic Staff of Union of Universities (ASUU) to the
use of IPPIS was largely due to the attendant changes the initiative brought in
the payment process.
“What ASUU is saying
is laughable. Your employers will dictate how they will pay you. They can
decide to pay you with a cheque which you sign in your regional office every
month and you take your salary and go. They can decide to do electronic
transfer. You bring your account number and they do a transfer electronically
to you,” he said.
“But for some
strange reasons, this has become an issue with the Academic Staff Union of
Universities. They claimed they were being migrated from the Government
Integrated Financial Management Information System platform into the IPPIS.
“The Federal
Government pays their salaries and the Federal Government says ‘we are losing a
lot of money paying you from the Government Integrated Financial Management
Information System (GIFMIS) platform because the GIFMIS platform only transmits
money for your salaries to the university system, bursar’s office and from
there they pay you.”
The minister also
pointed out that the use of GIFMIS was fraught with several anomalies which
include cases of ghost workers and people receiving more than their due.
“They are not and
because they are not, the shortfall in the taxes they deducted, the various
state governments were those universities are domiciled have petitioned the
Joint Tax Board to demand for this
shortfall to be paid by the Federal Government, which is the principal employer
of these university teachers,” he added.
“And over sometime,
that has accumulated into about N800bn which the Joint Tax Board has billed the
Federal Government as money that have not been paid to those sub-national
governments, the state governments.”
The federal
government and ASUU have been at loggerheads since the introduction of the
IPPIS.
While the federal
government claimed the move was to promote transparency in the payment process,
ASUU argued that the initiative threatens its autonomy.
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