The Federal Government has set up a Joint Committee to address the concerns raised by the Senior Staff Association Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Education Institutions (NASU) about the anomalies in the payment of their members, and related issues.
Minister for Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige stated this at the end of a meeting between the Federal Government and members of the Senior Staff Association Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Education Institutions (NASU), convened to avert the unions’ impending strike action.
Ngige said the Joint Committee comprising the unions and members of the government side, would work in harmony to ensure that those anomalies in payment complaints by the unions were treated to the satisfaction of concerned parties.
The Minister described the meeting as fruitful, and the progress made, satisfying as “the government side responded to issues on Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and what is being done to assist the University non-academic workers, who have had some complaints in that direction in terms of some of their allowances they said were chopped off by the IPPIS system.”
He disclosed that the unions’ executives had taken permission to go consult their members on some conclusions reached at the meeting, and would come back for further discussions.
Ngige said the government side also had a bigger Committee in place to formalise all the allowances that had been granted to all the unions in the University system – academic and non-academic.
According to him, that would create uniformity in the earned allowances in the University system.
The General Secretary, NASU, Peter Adeyemi, explained that on account of some developments at the meeting, the unions’ representatives requested for time to consult with and seek further directives from their members.
He said, “We just want to confirm that we are favourably disposed to dialogue and after discussing with our members, we will definitely come back and we will go on with the discussion.”