Polytechnic lecturers to FG: You can’t apply ‘no work, no pay’ policy to ASUU

The polytechnic lecturers in the country have faulted the Federal Government’s position to implement a no work, no pay policy for the striking public university lecturers in the country, saying such policy cannot work in the academic circle.

The President of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP), Dr Anderson Ezeibe, said this in an exclusive interview with Tribune Online on Monday.

He said workers who embark on industrial action are legitimate globally and that they do so most times as a last resort to press home their demands from the authority.

He said such is the case with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which has been on strike for more than six months and now extended it again.

Ezeibe explained the policy of no work, no pay rule cannot work for academia not only in Nigeria but also elsewhere globally, saying teachers have a syllabus to cover and that even if they are on industrial action for years, they will not skip any part of such scheme of work whenever they return to work.

He asked rhetorically if the Federal Government by this policy in contention is telling the striking lecturers to forget the scheme of work for the period the strike will last maybe like a whole semester or session when they eventually return to the classroom.

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“We all know that is practically impossible otherwise there will be more crises in the country’s education system and that is why academics cannot be treated the same way as their counterparts in other sectors of the economy, particularly civil servants when it comes to this kind of policy,” he argued.

He emphasised that no matter the number of years academics are on strike, they will still come back to continue work from where they have stopped and so the workloads remain the same, hence their salaries must be paid.

Speaking further he said, another issue is that ASUU is not the cause of the strike but government that is not meeting up with its responsibilities.

According to him, unions cannot just wake up one day and declare strike. Something must be responsible for it.

He said everyone wants peace to return to the tertiary schools in the country but the way the government is going about the whole issue will compound rather than resolve it.

He said he believes that ASUU’ reached the latest resolution to best serves the interest of its members and the Nigerian university system even as the union is entitled to such a decision.

He said it’s now left for the government to return to the table and resolve the issues in dispute in a transparent and sustainable manner so that normalcy can return soonest to the university campuses.

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Polytechnic lecturers to FG: You can’t apply ‘no work, no pay’ policy to ASUU

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Polytechnic lecturers to FG: You can’t apply ‘no work, no pay’ policy to ASUU