The Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has directed its members to shun further participation in the ongoing biometric verification exercise at the school.
Citing the handlers’ poor planning of the exercise in terms of consideration for the enormity of the number of staff to be screened and the failure to take precautionary measures against the COVID-19 pandemic, the union ordered teachers to boycott the exercise pending a just and satisfactory resolution of the problem.
In a joint statement yesterday in Ekpoma by Dr Cyril Oziegbe Onogbosele and Dr William Odion, the chairman and assistant secretary respectively and made available to journalists in Benin, the union described the exercise which commenced on September 13, 2021, and lasted for over three weeks as weird, deeply flawed and ineffectual.
According to Onogbosele and Odion, every day of the exercise, many members of staff were unattended to after waiting in the line patiently for a period of ten to eleven hours with concomitant loss of official hours of labour and productivity.
“The intimidating crowd that characterised each day of the exercise potentially exposed the staff to the threat of COVID-19 contrary to the ongoing efforts by Edo State Government to protect the citizenry against the pandemic,” they bemoaned.
The chairman and the scribe lamented the harrowing experiences of its members who were embarrassed, harassed, humiliated, intimidated and coerced by the verification team during the exercise to make presentations for the exercise against the published criteria and requirements by the university administration.
They disclosed that some academic staff had their certificates and other documents brazenly confiscated by the verification team in order to truncate the exercise for them and make them surrender to their dictates.
The union noted that the schedule for the exercise mixed academic staff with non-academic staff, a situation which caused over-crowding, confusion and ineffectiveness of the exercise unlike the previously conducted biometric exercises of 2001, 2005, 2009, 2016 and 2019.
Onogbosele and Odion added that spill-overs comprising all categories of staff characterised the intimidating crowd every day of the schedule.
The unionists insisted: “The Biometric Verification Team conducted the exercise in brazen disregard for the authority of the university administration as evidenced by the team’s resistance to the memoranda of the university administration in respect of the schedule and requirements for members’ participation in the exercise. The Union viewed this as a potent threat to the autonomy of the university.
“At the moment, the position of the Union is that the biometric verification exercise conducted in AAU, Ekpoma is jaundiced and a failure without transparency and credibility.”
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