Protesting workers of the University of
Lagos on Thursday disrupted activities in the school, as they demanded
the payment of their ‘earned allowances’.
The workers, comprising members of the
Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non Academic
Staff Union, blocked the university gate, an action that hindered human
and vehicular traffic for almost three hours.
The demonstration is coming barely 10
days after the students of the university shut the same gate to protest
the electrocution of a third-year Accounting student, Miss Oluchi
Anaekwe.
But
addressing the workers on Thursday, the SSANU Chairman in the school,
Mr. Adetomiwa Adekola, said the refusal of the authorities to pay their
earned allowances as well as the non-payment of their 13th month
allowances from 2007 to 2014 prompted the protest.
The workers, he also noted, were opposing
what they called “the illegal deductions of their contributory pension
since July 2004.”
Adekola added, “The workers unequivocally
demand the immediate stoppage of further deductions of contributory
pension from the salaries of members of staff, as the contributory
pension has been deducted from source before the release of subvention
for personnel cost by the Federal Government.
“We also demand the payment of earned
allowance, in particular, hazard allowance, to all members of staff of
the federal universities beginning from July 2009 till date and
immediate implementation of the allowance of staff payroll N30,000 and
N15,000 for senior and junior employees.”
The union leader, who wondered why the
authorities of the university had failed to pay their allowances, noted
that other institutions had been paying the money to their workers.
Meanwhile, the authorities, in a statement, have described the protest as an “unprovoked action.”
According the university’s Deputy
Registrar, Information, Mr. Olagoke Oke, the protest only aims at
breaching the peace of the institution.
The statement read in part; “Management
condemns in totality the action of the two Unions (SSANU & NASU) in
shutting the gates of the university, thereby disrupting peace on campus
when there has been no declaration of trade dispute.
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