• We are denied Eno-mber, new minimum wage – JAC chairman Okon
Staff of the Akwa Ibom State University (AKSU) are bracing up to shut the gates of the institution to academic and allied activities come Monday, 17 February, except the state government moves fast to appease them by addressing their grievances.
Workers in the university had issued a-21-day ultimatum last month to the state government to meet their demands or compel them to shut down operations in the institution and walk away from their duty posts.
When the ultimatum expired without response from government, the workers issued additional seven days’ notice of strike, which expires tomorrow, 16 February, at 11.59 p.m.
Speaking with WatchmanPost, Saturday, 15 February, the chairman of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of AKSU, Comrade Emmanuel Okon, expressed regret that the state government has been unfair to staffers of the school.
“For over two years now, we have been operating without a Governing Council in AKSU. We met the governor in February 2024 and he promised to look into this, but up until now, nothing has happened”, Okon said.
Beyond that, Okon, who also heads the Senior Staff Association of Universities (SSANU), AKSU branch, wondered why staff of AKSU were excluded from several benefits other public servants in Akwa Ibom were enjoying.
“During last July’s Public Service Week, the governor promised to give each public servant in the state ₦20,000. He has since fulfilled that promise, but we in AKSU have been excluded from that largesse”, Okon lamented.
He said that his colleagues were also excluded from last December’s additional pay, christened Eno-mber, which the state government extended to its staff.
Okon claimed that it took strike launched by his colleagues for the state government to pay them their 2023 leave grants, wondering why the same scenario was playing out with regards to their 2024 leave grants.
On why such things were happening to them, Okon said, “The governor had told us that we needed to be captured into the Integrated Public Service Payroll and that if that is not done, definitely some of these things will not be given to us.”
Based on this, he said he learnt that the management of AKSU wrote several letters on the matter to government, “but nothing has been done. We have not been captured.”
Comrade Emmanuel Okon added, “Even this last verification; you know the governor said that only those verified will be paid the new minimum wage. When the schedule for verification was released, we were not included and when we contacted the relevant government agencies, they said that something will be done about it. But as we speak, nothing has been done about it. Now that civil servants have been paid the new minimum wage, we are still on the old salary scale.”
The labour leader said that there were other issues government should do about staff welfare and other matters of general application that would elevate the status of the university, but that government was dragging its feet to address them.
Asked what they would do if government did not resolve their grievances in time, Okon said that he was hopeful that government would do something before the expiration of their seven-day ultimatum, but if that did not happen, “we will finally direct our members on what to do next.”
