The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has pointed out why it won’t call off the industrial action embarked upon by its members.
The Coordinator of the Calabar Zone of ASUU, Dr. Aniekan Brown said the industrial action would continue as long as the government insists on the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System, IPPIS.
Addressing journalists yesterday in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, Brown described IPPIS as a cesspool of corruption.
He also dismissed claims by the Government that 71,000 ASUU members had already accepted to register with the IPPIS.
Describing the claim as incorrect, Brown insisted that such was a distraction to the academic body.
He said:
“The distraction known as IPPIS is a cesspool of corruption and Federal Government’s illicit commitment, hard-work, determination and treachery to forcibly migrate employees of Federal universities to the IPPIS platform.
“Government’s claim is not true. We challenge the authorities to the fact that we are not up to 71,000 members.
The Minister for Finance, Budget and National Planning had earlier said 71,000 members of ASUU had accepted to register on the IPPIS platform. So, the Government’s statistics are faulty and mere propaganda.
“We will not resume work until Government addresses our demands, ASUU members have not been paid for between four and nine months. We are still in the trenches.”
“We argued that it is a case of economic waste, because ASUU has been rejecting the IPPIS since 2013 and Government challenged us to produce an alternative.
We took up the challenge and came up with UTAS.”
