The staff of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), Lagos State have declared an indefinite strike, over what they described as illegal deductions in their salaries.
The Joint Forum of YABATECH Staff Unions; consisting of the Academic Staff of Polytechnics (ASUP), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Polytechnics (SSANP), and Non Academic Staff Union (NASU) made the decision at a joint congress at the polytechnic’s Sports Centre, where more than a hundred members were present.
Addressing the congress, the ASUP Chairman, Mr. Adeyemi Aromolaran, said all the allowances accrued to the staff were removed when they were paid their salaries for July on Wednesday 3rd of August, 2016.
“The essence of our allowances is for the performance of our other responsibilities and to enhance our salaries. Now that they have removed them, it means we are no longer accrued to those responsibilities. Even the HOD’s allowances have been removed, which means we no longer have HODs. We know that our President is not wicked and would not direct that our salaries be reduced in these times of economic hardships. We generate funds in our IGR and when we were paid from there, we were doing fine. The fact that some other polytechnics may not be generating enough to pay allowances from their IGR does not mean we should suffer for it. Offa and Ado-Ekiti polytechnics have paid salaries last week and they did not deduct anything so how can Lagos be different? We don’t even have welfare support anymore and even the deducted salary was paid late,” he said.