From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Officials of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) and the Senior Staff of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), on Tuesday, joined the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in requesting a payment system outside the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) being used for salaries and other entitlements of federal government workers.
Joint Action Committee (JAC) of SSANU AND NASU presented the proposed new payment platform known as University Peculiar Payroll Payment System (U3PS) to the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in Abuja, on Tuesday,
President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, in his remarks, explained that the platform was designed to accommodate all the stakeholders in the university system, notably, academic, non academic staff and academic technologies.
He said: “We believed government when they encouraged us to join IPPIS platform, saying that it was designed to fight corruption in the system. Unfortunately, we discovered that it was full of inconsistencies. We gave IPPIS a trial for several months and discovered that it wasn’t what government told us, hence our decision to develop the new payment platform, U3PS.
“Our members could no longer bear the inconsistencies, and within us we found out that we have technical and ICT experts that can help us 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.”
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who received the proposed document, stressed the need for one payment platform that can serve the interest of everyone in the country.
He, however, said the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will conduct integrity test of the platform before any further action or decision will be taken on the matter.
He told the union officials that the Ministry and the Federal Government is always open to new idea. “I must also tell you that I am 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, ASUU’s University Transparency Accountability System (UTAS), may also have an edge in a particular area, and then these two can be used to make IPPIS better.”
Recall that the two unions like ASUU had rejected IPPIS introduced by the federal government for the payment of workers’ salaries. While ASUU had came up with UTAS, the JAC of SSANU and NASU opted for U3PS.