Staff members of Federal Polytechnic, Ukana, in Akwa Ibom State, under the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Polytechnics began a 7-day warning strike on Friday with a protest march around the school premises.
According to The PUNCH, the strike is in response to management’s alleged poor handling of their demands, including non-payment of 38% salary shortfall, promotion arrears, and forceful conversion of staff, among others.
Led by SSANIP Chairman, Tamunosiki Daka, the protesters marched to the Rector’s Office, displaying placards and chanting solidarity songs.
He expressed disappointment that the management has been turning deaf ears to all issues of the association, including the personnel salaries shortfalls since 2015 despite frequent reminders.
“Please let it be on record that, I, the chairman of the SSANIP Federal Polytechnic, Ukana, is not fighting anybody, I was not elected to fight anybody, I was not elected to look into the affairs of anybody outside that of SSANIP.
“SSANIP welfare is my topmost priority and how can we talk about welfare without them giving us our arrears of what they owe us. Over the years from 2015-date, we have been crying about salary shortfalls and they think we don’t know what we are doing. We made a case for this issue when the visitation panel came here and they promised to get back to us but up to date, nothing has happened.
“We have met the management but they did not give any concrete reason for us not to go on this strike; we wrote the acting Rector but she did not attend to us until the present Rector, Dr Uduak Ndaeyo, now attended to us, but even at that, no concrete answer was given to us.
“Nothing to hold back to the congress and now congress said our ultimatum of 7 days stands and the rules of engagement is that before you embark on any industrial action you must inform management 21 days, 14 days, and seven days of which we have done.
“We have been begging for the past six months. How would you tell me that appointing a teaching staff to the position of ICT is the right decision? By Monday, no office will be opened in this place, we are going to shut down every office, including that of the Rector,” Daka threatened.
He also called on President Bola Tinubu to use his good office to investigate the personnel salaries of the institution from 2015.
He said, “We want to call on the President to investigate all personnel salaries from 2015-date when we migrated to the IPPIS platform because they are claiming that they paid us all the shortfalls to 100% but up to now no one has seen anything.”
