Lecturers at Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo in Ondo State have expressed displeasure over 11 months of unpaid salaries.
Speaking at a press conference in Owo on Tuesday, the chairman of the polytechnic chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Ade Arikawe, said the union members were no longer able to discharge their duties on empty stomachs.
He said irregular payment of salaries had been going on in the polytechnic for seven years, noting that efforts to address the issue had often been fruitless.
Arikawe said: “We have tried as much as possible to be discharging our duties even in hunger.
“We have been doing this to suit and please Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, an indigene of Owo so that his political opponents will not use non-payment of salaries against him.
“We have done enough, however, and we can’t wait any longer nor endure again.
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“The struggle has been on for a long time; for seven years, actually. Without paying our salary arrears, we will not conduct examination for students.
“The only language we want to hear is that our salary arrears have been paid.”
He said since the beginning of 2023, academic staff of the institution had been paid only February salary and part-payment for March.
The ASUP chairman stated that the polytechnic owed more than N6 billion in workers’ salaries, promotion benefits, and others.
Arikawe added that it was also worrisome that the institution refused to pay the financial benefits of promotion of staff since 2015.
Arikawe noted that the polytechnic currently suffered huge deficits in infrastructure, equipment, and teaching aids.
He traced the perpetual delay in salary payment to continual slashing of the government subvention to the polytechnic since the administration of former governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko.
Arikawe said unpaid salaries led to untimely deaths, avoidable ill health, broken marriages, humiliation, and all manner of unimaginable living conditions by lecturers of the institution.
On the planned conversion of the polytechnic to a university, the ASUP chairman condemned the setting up of a panel to execute the switch without involving ASUP.
Arikawe demanded that qualified ASUP members should be allowed to migrate to the proposed university as was done in some other states.
He, however, commended the state government for reinstating some ASUP members sacked over unionism.
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