The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on the federal government to address issues that necessitated the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) and other unions in tertiary institutions.
President of NLC, Ayuba Wabba, made the call when he addressed reporters shortly before going into a closed door meeting of the Congress’s Central Working Committee (CWC) on Wednesday in Abuja.
Mr Wabba said the call was imperative in the interest of the Nigerian children who are from poor homes.
“In Nigeria today, we are facing a period of great injustice on the downtrodden of the society, the worst of it is that for more than three months, the children of the poor are actually at home and this is not acceptable.
“But instead of the politicians looking at the issues as a national disaster, they are discussing politics, that is why there can never be equity and justice in such a system,” he said
The labour leader said the union “have communicated what we think would be able to resolve the issue with the government” but has so far received no information of “any effort being made by them to look at that recommendation, we made to them.’’
ASUU embarked on a nationwide warning strike to press home its members’ demands from February 14.
The lecturers’ demands include; funding of the Revitalisation of Public Universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and promotion arrears.
Others are the renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and the inconsistency in Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
The NLC president further said the CWC meeting would look at the next step to take if the government fails to respond to its recommendation on resolving the ongoing strike by unions in the tertiary institutions.
He also said the CWC would also look at key issues of the economy, major roles to bring about peace and respect to the sanity of collective bargaining in the education sector, among others.
(NAN)
