Plateau State University Academic Staff Union has denounced the unilateral decision by the state University Administration to impose a paltry amount of money as mainstream Allowances (EAA) into the salaries of Academic Staff without reaching an agreement with the union.
The Chairman of the union, Dr Monday Hassan Zitta, and Secretary, Dr Lomka Iliya Kopdiya, in a statement in Jos at the weekend, hinted that not going into agreement with the union before implementing anything is a serious contentious matter that could lead to an industrial action.
According to the two union leaders, Earned Academic Allowance is usually computed and paid at the end of an Academic session based on the ratio of staff and students after a period of teaching assessment and project subversion.
According to them, in 2021, following a strike action, the past Plateau state government significantly increased the monthly subvention to the University to cater for payment of EAA. Still, sadly, the University administration chose to use the increased subvention for other purposes.
“To resolve the problems and agitations of the union, and conscious of the disadvantages of the proposal, the management agreed that payment of EAA should be mainstreamed into monthly salaries instead of seasonal computation”
The Union leaders said that this has been done in other state universities with conditions acceptable to both the administration and the union, but lamented that instead of commending them by appreciating the gesture, the university authorities decided to ignore the Union’s correspondences on the matter and hastily imposed a token amount that is the least compared to other state university with mainstreamed EAA in their monthly salaries.
They recalled that in a committee’s report, the union recommended reasonable and justifiable figures to be negotiated for but regretted that the payment was abandoned on the excuse that the federal government had taken a position on the matter which could not be substantiated.
They appealed to the general public to intervene in this matter by calling on the state government to address this and other problems as soon as possible before it leads to the declaration of total, comprehensive and indefinite action.
The two union leaders also demanded that the university authority should either revert to the Seasonal computation method or consider and pay the justifiable and reasonable amount as recommended by the union and as stated in the Professor Bulus Gyang committee report.
They also asked for the payment of the outstanding fifty per cent of the 2923/2024 earned Academic allowance and as well addressed all outstanding in previously signed agreements between the union and the state government, stressing that the union is always open and willing to come for discussions or for any engagements that would lead to the progress of the Plateau State University, Bokkos.
