By Regina Abella
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and the Senior Staff of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), have presented a new payment platform to the Federal Government through which they want their salaries paid.
The platform, known as University Peculiar Payroll Payment System (U3PS) was presented to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in Abuja on Tuesday,
Like their counterparts, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the non academic unions had rejected the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) introduced by the federal government for the payment of workers’ salaries.
According to President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, the platform if approved, would accommodate all stakeholders in the university system including academic, non teaching staff and academic technologies.
He said: “We believe then that since the government said IPPIS was going to use to fight corruption we should join hands with government to give IPPIS a trial and we went through IPPIS from the first month to second and third, to fourth and there about it was full of inconsistencies.
“So much that our members could no longer bear and within us we found out that we have technical and ICT experts that can help us to develop an alternative to IPPIS which is called the University Perculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) where we believed that all the inconsistencies in the IPPIS will be resolved.”
Receiving the proposed document, Adamu who disclosed that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) would have to carry out an integrity test on the platform, however stressed the need for one payment platform that could serve everyone in the country.
He said “The ministry and the government is always open to new idea. I must also tell you that I’m not an expert to know that this one is workable or better than what is already available or better than what is been proposed by ASUU but what I know is in the end, probably we have to accept the situation where your own may have some edge in a particular area, UTAS may have an edge and then these two can be used to make IPPIS better.”
End.
