By Okey Maduforo Awka.
A total of twelve staff of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka who are being owed five years salaries have died while waiting to be paid .
This is coming as over 1,000 staff of the institution protested on Wednesday at the campus demanding payment of their five months salaries.
Deepening the fate of the staff is the controversy over the N1 Billion Personnel Cost which was earlier agreed to be used to settle the workers which the school management allegedly failed to honour it’s promise.
According to one of the affected staff Mr Chukwuebuka Emmanuel working at the Center for Disabilities And Special Needs Research, who incidentally is a blind man ;
“We were employed since 2019 and till date we have not received any salary and initially we were told that the problem is wth the Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System IPPIS .later the then Governing Council came on board and approved our payments and capturing yet nothing came out of it ”
“,This has been affecting us generally not to talk of persons with disabilities and it has not been easy as a family man taking care of his wife and children ”
“If I remove my spectacle you can see that I am crying and we are owing our landlords and there is a limit at which the landlord can assist you and what do I tell my children when they demand for school fees and other needs ? ”
“We do not know those that are holding our salaries we do not know if it is the Federal government or the Ministry of Education or the University ” he lamented.
Also speaking Mr Ibezim Echezona cried that twelve of their members affected by the non payment of salaries have died waiting for the money to be paid.
“Our members are dying and we have buried twelve members so far the last one was this year and this is someone that we saw last December and today she is no more and that is to tell you what we are going through due to non payment of our salaries for five to six years now”
“This problem is in the hands of the University because the IPPIS is no more and we remember our last visit to the Bursar about the N1 Billion Personnel Cost and he told us that the money belongs to us and it would be used to settle us and later he started saying a different thing that it doesn’t belong to us and this is causing serious problems in the University as the school management has failed to tell us what that money is meant for and how the money was spent ”
“We demand explanation about that N1 Billion Personnel Cost and they should tell us if it is Abuja or the School Management that is holding our salaries and according to the Acting Vice Chancellor last two years the number of staff being owed salaries for five years is about one thousand in number so what is stopping them from paying us ?” he contended.
