By Princess-Ekwi Ajide, Abuja
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and the Senior Staff of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) have presented their desired payment platform to the Federal Government.
They presented the platform, known as University Peculiar Payroll Payment System (U3PS), to the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, in Abuja on Tuesday.
The non academic unions like their sister union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), had rejected the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) introduced by the Federal Government for the payment of workers’ salaries.
Speaking the SSANU president, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, said the platform if approved, would capture all stakeholders in the university system including academic, non academic staff, and academic technologists.
According Ibrahim, they decided to give IPPIS a trial because government said IPPIS was going to be used to fight corruption and they went through IPPIS from the first month to second and third, to fourth but noticed it was full of inconsistencies hence they are presenting the new platform to join hands with government in fighting corruption
He said the inconsistencies were so much that their members could no longer bear and from amongst them, they found out that they have technical and ICT experts that could help develop an alternative to IPPIS which they called the University Perculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) and strongly believe that all the inconsistencies in the IPPIS will be resolved.”
Receiving the document, the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, stressed the need for one payment platform that would serve workers in the country, saying that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will have to carry out an integrity test on the platform.
According to him, government is always open to new idea adding that though he’s not an expert to know if this one is workable or better than what is already available or better than what is been proposed by ASUU but he knows that in the end, they probably will have to accept a situation where the new platform may have some edge in a particular area, UTAS may have an edge in another area and the two can be merged to make IPPIS better.
