Academic activities in polytechnics across the country may be grounded this week as members of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, have given the Federal Government until on Wednesday, February 25 to implement a four year- old agreement or they would paralyse the system.
The lecturers, who called off an almost one year strike in 2014 based on promises by then newly appointed Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, lamented that none of the items on their list of demands had been attended to.
The fresh strike threat by ASUP followed the breakdown of talks between the union and Shekarau last Thursday at a closed door meeting over the Federal Government’s suspension of the implementation of CONTISS 15 salary scale.
ASUP President, Chibuzor Asomugha, told journalists after an emergency National Executive Council meeting of the union in Abuja that the governing councils of Federal Polytechnic, Oko and Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti should be dissolved for creating avoidable problems in their institutions.
“You will recall that in 2012, our union placed a 13-point demand portfolio before government for negotiation and subsequent implementation. Most of these demands were a carryover from the 2009 Agreement between the Federal Government and the union.
“The failure of government to attend to these demands led to a series of strike actions between 2013 and 2014. The polytechnic sector is still undergoing a frenzied recovery from the scars of that engagement.
“As we have always stated, the sordid experience our sector went through in recent times was avoidable if government had deployed proactive measures in addressing the issues in dispute,” he said.
Some of the demands include the ‘continued discrimination’ against polytechnic graduates in the public service and the labour market in Nigeria, including the non-release of the White Paper on visitation to federal polytechnics.
They are also protesting the non-implementation of CONTISS 15 migration for the lower cadres and its arrears as from 2009 when salary structure was approved.
The polytechnic lecturers also decried the non-establishment of a National Polytechnics Commission and the ‘wrongful recognition’ of the National Board for Technical Education as the regulatory body for polytechnics.
They are also asking for more funding for polytechnics, appointment of competent people into governing councils and adequate funding of state polytechnics by their various owners.
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