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LequteMan
Guest
The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has given the Federal Government a 60-day ultimatum to meet its demands.
The President of the Union, Mr. Asagha Okoro, in an interview with Vanguard said “we have packaged all the issues facing the teaching education sector. If we do not see concrete action within 60 days, we will employ non conventional industrial methods to make our voice heard.”
He said N26bn is enough to meet their demands.
The union had met with the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Emeka Wogu and government representatives 7 days ago after a one week warning strike.
Okoro, speaking on the outcome of the meeting said: “We were told that our concerns were germane and will be addressed. However, the issues discussed were forwarded to the Minister of State for Education and we were told that a meeting would be scheduled with him as soon as possible.”
An MoU was also signed stating that the General of the Federation will demonstrate the workings of the IPPIS platform to the Executive of COEASU on October 29,2013 and that the meeting shall reconvene after 60 days to consider progress made in respect of the outstanding issues now referred back to the Federal Ministry of Education.
The union had pointed out 17 issues to be addressed by the government among which are “the suspicious delay in the release of the 2012 visitation white paper; the refusal of colleges managements to recruit commensurate academic manpower to cater for the high dearth of academic staff to meet the contemporary challenges engendered by the rising population of students; the non-harmonization of conditions of service for academic staff of all tertiary institutions to stem brain drain from the colleges of education to the universities; the proposed selective imposition of IPPIS in the CoE and the polytechnics; the truncation of a hitherto functional and innovative Tertiary Education Trust Fund leading to obvious regrettable gaps that compromises the critical need for the consolidation of the gains recorded during the past five years; non implementation of CONPCASS, 65 years retirement age and Migration to CONTISS 15 in some state CoE; the non conduct of Needs Assessment for CoE to address students and staff needs for the enhancement of quality teaching and learning.”