As a way to end the strike imbroglio, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has recommended what it calls Universities Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to Federal Government.
However, ASUU still opposes the migration of its members to Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) platform.
IPPIS, according to Federal Government, is a centralized payroll platform introduced to help it in monitoring and blocking leakages in the payment of salaries and wages.
The UTAS position was affirmed by ASUU National President, Biodun Ogunyemi in his reaction to earlier reports that President Buhari has declared that lecturers not captured on the IPPIS platform would not get their salaries.
According to him, “What we have started is to open the issues, we will still meet again to continue from where we stopped.
“We have developed what we call University Transparency and Accountability Solution. We have presented it to the Senate today and the Senate President commended it.
“We have shown that we are inventors, we are creators of software and we are also capable of doing what our colleagues are doing in other parts of the world.”
This comes days after President Muhammadu Buhari, in his presentation of the 2021 budget proposals to the National Assembly, said only federal workers enrolled on the IPPIS will be paid salaries.
Ogunyemi, a Professor, declared that President Muhammadu Buhari was not addressing its members when he declared that only those on the IPPIS platform will get their salary.
Buhari, speaking during the presentation of the 2021 National budget estimates to a joint sitting of the National Assembly on Thursday, stated that only lecturers captured on the IPPIS Platform would be paid their salary.
“I don’t think that statement was really meant to upset ASUU. We have been at a meeting with Mr President, where we presented that same issue and we left that meeting the understanding that what we believe is better than IPPIS should be appropriate,” Ogunyemi told Tribune in a telephone interview.
He added that they already presented an alternative to the government which is under, noting that he believes President Buhari was talking about not paying money to those who do not exist “but our members are in existence and we reached an understanding with the government that an alternative to IPPIS would be accepted.”
