THE Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) have developed a payment platform tagged University General Peculiar Payroll Payment System (UGPPPS) for the payment of non-academic staff salaries in public universities in the country to replace the contentious Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) which is currently in operation for the payment of all public service workers.
The unions disclosed this during their meeting with the federal government on Tuesday, October 20, 2020 that they developed UGPPPS as their own payroll platform that would cater for the peculiarities required in the payment of salaries in the university system.
The Minister in his response to the information said the government is inclined to any research that is capable of assisting in fine-tuning the payment system.
At the Tuesday meeting, it was decided to set up a five-man committee to resolve the inconsistencies in the payment of university workers’ salaries under the IPPIS platform. The committee was given two weeks to conclude its assignment. The membership of the five-man committee is drawn from National Salaries Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC), Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, IPPIS, National Universities Commission (NUC) and Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF).
The committee was given the mandate to among other things worked with the unions to identify and pay those who had not been paid, identify those whose check-off dues had been deducted but not remitted and holistically examine the complaints of the unions on inconsistencies in their payments under IPPIS.
The unions were requested to forward all necessary data and submit the relevant documents on the issue of welfare, to assist IPPIS to make deductions, on or before Friday, October 23, 2020.
On other issues raised by NASU and SSANU related to the implementation of the new national minimum wage, the meeting agreed that the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) would, within two weeks, compute the arrears of minimum wage from April 2019 to January 2020 and forward to the Federal Ministry of Education to process for payment through the Federal Ministry of Finance.
On the matter of non-payment of earned allowances, it was resolved that the N30 billion earlier agreed on with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to be released soon is meant for members of all the unions in federal universities including the National Association of Academic Technologist (NAAT).
