ASUU strike continues as FG makes new proposals

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will continue its ongoing two-week strike, despite the federal government’s new proposals to the lecturers.

The union commenced the warning strike on March 9, 2020 after disagreement with the government over issues of revitalization of universities, earned academic allowance.

Others are visitation panel, mainstreaming and most importantly the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and also other issues relating to university funding.

According to NAN, the federal government offered fresh proposals to ASUU during a meeting between delegates from both camps on Tuesday.

Chris Ngige, minister of labour, said both parties had fruitful deliberations on contentious issues, especially the issue of IPPIS.

“The meeting was longer than anticipated because we had to look at all the issues that were in our 2019 Memorandum of Actions, especially those that had not been fully addressed. We made new proposal on behalf of FG to ASUU,” he said.

“These issues range from funding, revitalization of public universities, earned academic allowances, salary shortfalls in Federal University of Akure and the issue of state universities.”

The minister said the federal government would be expecting the response of ASUU after meeting with its executives.

“We have agreed on tentative date to get back to government is before the weekend runs out. We expect ASUU to write the government before then to see if there will be need for further meeting,” he said.

Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU president, also confirmed that the federal government had made new proposals as regards issues raised by the union.

He said the meeting was an improvement over the previous one the union had with the government, adding that ASUU would discuss the decisions reached at the meeting with its members.

“But as we usually say, those of us here cannot give the final pronouncements on any of the proposals and we have assured the government that we will report faithfully to our principals and get back to government accordingly,” he said.

This is the second meeting between ASUU and the federal government.

During their first meeting in Abuja, both parties were said to have reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to merge UTAS and IPPIS.