The Academic Staff Union of Universities, Abia State University chapter (ASUU-ABSU), says its ongoing strike will continue until the state government addresses salary arrears, poor remuneration and what it described as the unjust suspension of one of its members.
ASUU-ABSU Chairman, Dr Chidi Mbah, made the remarks in an interview with Sunday PUNCH monitored by The HR Anchor.
Mbah said the union is protesting more than just allowances, citing unpaid salaries, wrong salary scales and deductions from cooperative funds.
Speaking on the suspension of Prof Nnamdi Nwaeze over a Facebook post, Mbah said the union rejected the action.
“We had a meeting with the management of the university, and we, as ASUU, made our position clear on the suspension. We told them that we would not accept it for any reason and that, if there was any justification for the suspension, the laid-down procedures in the university’s edict should have been followed,” he said.
“For us in ASUU, we did not see anything wrong with what Prof Nwaeze did. The university claimed there were accumulated acts of wrongdoing by the lecturer before now, but we said those allegations were neither before us nor to our knowledge. If there had been any previous offence, we expected the institution to have acted on it at the time. For them to suspend him now, we do not accept it.”
On welfare issues, Mbah confirmed that many lecturers are being paid below the approved scale and that some are owed salaries running into several years.
“That is why I said everything he mentioned in his post is true, and that is one of the reasons we are on strike. It is not even about the Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance. It goes beyond that because lecturers who have been promoted are not being paid on the appropriate salary scale.
“They pay us only half of our salaries. They also deducted N473 million from our cooperative funds and have not remitted it to our account.
“You should note that this did not happen under the current administration, but the government is a continuum. It happened during the previous administration.”
Addressing claims of prolonged salary omissions, the chairman said the problem affects many members.
“That is true. It is what we call salary omission. It is not just one person, or 20, or 30. They are many. Some are owed 17 months, some 30 months, some 35 months, and some as much as 44 months. Others are owed two months, 10 months, or three months. On Friday, we had a meeting with the government.”
ASUU-ABSU said it expects the government to act on the issues raised during Friday’s meeting to enable academic activities to resume.
