Poly berates lecturers for protesting against unpaid allowances 

The management of the Akanu Ibiam Federal Polytechnic Unwanna Afikpo Ebonyi state has berated the members of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP) for protesting unpaid one month salary.

The Rector of the institution, Ven. OgbonniaIbe-Enwo berated the lecturers and said that they have militarized unionism.The lectures of the school under ASUP have been protesting the withdrawal of their special Allowance identified as Peculiar Academic Allowance (PAA) by management of the polytechnic.

He noted that the union has been hijacked by some persons in the group who have personal issues with the management of the institution stressing that it is only one month that the allowance was not paid which according to him, is not supposed to cause the protest by the lecturers.

His words: “By January 2018, we expect our wage bill to drop again. As at December 2017, the wage bill did not accommodate their peculiar allowance.“We paid them their full salaries but this peculiar allowance was not accommodated. The next thing the union did was to hold their meeting and passed a resolution to start demonstrating.

“It is instructive to note that before now, they have given 21days ultimatum to council that they are going to embark on strike and council invited the union, deliberated on two issues-peculiar allowance and their purported double pension deductions. It was exhaustively discussed and council discovered that they were unable to prove their allegation.”

“We are still negotiating and council being the highest decision making body had already taken a decision and they are yet to meet to come up with a decision and what we see was that the union went on demonstration.

“I want to say that some individuals have hijacked the affairs of the e union for selfish serving purposes. They have issues with the management and they think that the best place they can express it is at the floor of the union. They meet in the union, move motions without counter and go on protest. The type of unionism they are doing is not the type we did in our own time.”