The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), will today begin a nationwide one-week warning strike to protest what it described as the failure of government to implement the NEEDS assessment report of July 2014.
This was disclosed by Usman Dutse, the president of the union while addressing journalists in Abuja.
According to him, there would be no academic and administrative activity in any public polytechnic between 12 noon of 30 January, 2017 and 6 February, 2017.
He noted that already, the union has directed its members in all public polytechnics across the federation to ensure total compliance.
The issues in contention include the non-implementation of the report of the NEEDS Assessment report which as at July 2014 revealed that public polytechnics and Colleges of Technology in Nigeria require injection of minimum of N652.6million to address the rot in infrastructure in the sector; sustained poor funding of public polytechnics as shown in the poor but yet unimplemented capital grant to polytechnics and deliberate attempts at frustrating the resolution of the meeting of the Council on Establishment held in July 2016 on the removal of entry level dichotomy against HND holders.
Other issues are victimization of union officials, non-release of union check off dues and interference in union activities, non-release of CONTISS 15 migration arrears, release of visitation panel report of Federal polytechnics and report of Ministerial panels to Federal polytechnics in Auchincloss, Oko’ Yaba and Ado-Ekiti, delay in the review of the Federal Polytechnic Act, non-commencement of renegotiation of the ASUP/government agreement of 2010 and government’s tardiness in the appointment of Rectors of Federal polytechnics.
