|Ukorebi Esien| 19th, September 2017|
TDN can confidently report that Striking
members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Monday suspended
the strike they embarked upon five weeks ago, grounding the entire university
system.
Federal Government was forced to bow to ASUU’s terms
which culminated in the suspension of the strike, after stakeholders in the
sector had a stormy meeting to reappraisal all the demands made by ASUU.
One of the major concessions from government was to
honour the 2009 agreement government had with ASUU, by releasing the sum of
N220 billion not later than October 2017.
The ASUU President admitted that the proposals made by government
were concrete for the time being.
“We have had
useful deliberations and we had some concrete proposals that we will take back
to our members as part of our consultations. And like the Honourable Minister of
Labour has said, we plan to come back here to take decisions as advised by our
members, “Ogunyemi said.
Ngige said beyond the pledge to release the sum of N220
billion not later than October 2017 to fund the revitalization of federal
universities across the country, government had began paying the earned
allowances of ASUU members.
He noted that the present
administration had been holding meetings with ASUU on how to address the non-release of funds which ought to
have commenced in 2014 under the immediate past administration.
Another condition for suspending the strike was the
pledge by government to set up the National Universities Pension Commission.
“We also discussed the issue of university staff schools
and treasury single account with a view to finding how the system could
accommodate funds for research grants that need to be independent from the
government.
“We also discussed the issue of how the Federal Government
could be involved in the running of state universities”, Ngige said.
He had promised that a seven-man committee would be set
up to work towards implementation of the proposals that had been endorsed by
all parties.
According to him, most of ASUU’s demands that were
discussed during the meeting emanated from the 2009 agreement and the 2013
Memorandum of Understanding the university teachers had with the federal
government, saying it was important that solutions were found to these pending
problems.
As we all celebrate the
suspension of ASSU strike let’s not forget that the strike may resume in
October, 2017 because in calling off the strike, ASUU gave the Federal
Government further conditions to ensure full implementation of their demands on
or before the end of October, 2017.
And as we all know our
government, I can bet that the conditions will not be met, by October. It may
take another strike action for those conditions to be met.
0 comments: