The Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, (RUGIPO) lecturers under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP) have threatened a showdown with the management and state government over their 11 months of unpaid salaries.
This is just as the lecturers alleged the state government of keeping all stakeholders in the dark over the plans to upgrade the state-owned polytechnic to a university, calling on the state government to carry them along in the process.
Speaking during a press conference on Tuesday, the Chairman of ASUP in the school, Mr. Ade Arikawe, lamented that some members of the union have been living from hand to mouth and could not afford to take proper care of their families due to the unpaid salaries.
He said “This callous immiseration of lecturers in the Institution has led to untimely deaths, avoidable ill-health, broken marriages, humiliation and all manner of unimaginable living conditions of lecturers in Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo”
“This pathetic situation has been going on for the past seven years with no respite in sight. The state government has continually slashed the subvention to the school, and this has precipitated the culdesac the Institution found itself in”
Arikawe also disclosed that the state government has been paying fractional salaries saying lecturers are being treated like beggars.
He said “Unfortunately, this is happening at a time when the state government has been trumpeting the news of successfully clearing the backlog of salary owed workers, in addition to a halt in fractional payment of salary to workers in the state. Why the fate of RUGIPO lecturers is different is difficult to understand”
The ASUP chairman, however, vowed that the union would stand against any pressure not to pay all their outstanding salary arrears before the commencement of the proposed university.
“Recently, we heard that the government intends to convert the polytechnic to a university, as far as we are concerned, such an initiative is a laudable development.
” However, it is sad to note that despite the fact that ASUP is a critical stakeholder in the polytechnic, it is neither involved nor carried along in the whole process so far.
“We believe this is an egregious oversight that should be corrected forthwith. As it is, the union is averse to any plan, however, conceived that will not put into consideration the interests of academic staff members in the institution.
“Because the proposed university will not be starting on a tabula rasa, rather it will inherit the infrastructure, location, goodwill of the community and other resources of the predecessor institution, ASUP, demands that its members, who are all qualified with most parading PhDs or in various stages of completing same should necessarily migrate to the proposed university, while the fine details of such migration could be dealt with as necessary”
He also lamented that “Many lecturers in the institution have no offices and those that managed to have only have empty offices with no furniture to sit on or work with. And without these arrears being cleared, we will not participate in any examination exercise.
“What we are saying is that our members should be part of the university staff, the idea of re-applying or you have to apply before you join that university is not acceptable to us.
“And in other processes, we must be involved because we are the major stakeholders. We must be part of that process. All our members must be part of the staff of the university.”
The union, however, called on the state government, all stakeholders, and well-meaning people of the state to come to the rescue of the institution.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then