Abuja – The Federal Government has released N 52. 5 billion for the payment of earned allowance of university lecturers and revitalisation of infrastructure in its universities .
The Minister of Labour , Mr Chris Ngige disclosed this in Abuja at the weekend.
He said that N30 billion was for Infrastructure Revitalisation Fund while N22.5 billion was for the payment of earned academic allowance to the lecturers.
It would be recalled that members of ASUU are threatening to embark on another round of nationwide strike over alleged failure of government to respect the agreement signed with them.
However, Ngige, explained that government was steadily making progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding reached with ASUU.
The Minister who was giving an update on the implementation of the agreement said the Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed to him that money had been released to the universities for the revitalisation of infrastructure and payment of earned allowances.
“By Friday, December 10, the Accountant General’s Office and the Funds Office of the Federal Ministry of Finance told me that they paid the Earned Allowances to the 38 federal universities and by now all the affected universities would have gotten their monies for workers.
“I have forwarded the position to the ASUU leadership,” he said.
Ngige also said that the contentious issue of the salary payment platform, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) was being addressed, revealing that the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has submitted its report to government.
“Just today again, NITDA submitted its report on the assessment conducted on UTAS and it has been forwarded to the Ministry of Finance, Accountant General’s Office and IPPIS Office so that they will look at it and sort out other details.
“Copies of the report have also been forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Education and National Universities Commission (NUC),” he said.
On whether the report on UTAS was a positive one, the minister said it scored over 50 per cent of the points used in the evaluation, adding that it is work- in-progress.
“Out of the 500 test points that were used in rating it, we are talking about 50 per cent success rate.
“So, it’s work-in-progress. The Ministry of Finance and Accountant General’s Office are to study the report and areas that they are not satisfied they will let us know and we’ll get back to NITDA because we have a combined team with the NUC and IPPIS Office,” Ngige added.
On threat of strike by the lecturers, Ngige said that he expected the leadership of the union to inform its organs of the latest progress made in the implementation of the agreement .
“The important thing is that we have kept our promise that the N30 billion revitalisation fund has been paid and that N22.5 billion Earned Allowances have also been paid.
“So, we look forward to tackling other remaining areas like errors in computation of salaries of some of the staff and of course the question of renegotiation of agreements, which is being handled with the Federal Ministry of Education,” he explained.
