The Academic Staff Union of Universities has described the directive stopping the salaries of university employees, who have not enrolled on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, as blackmail to weaken workers and make them enroll on the platform.

The Chairman of the University of Port Harcourt Branch of ASUU, Dr Austen Sado, who spoke on Sunday, explained that though some of his colleagues had not been paid salaries since February, the union would not be cowed into enrolling on IPPIS.

Sado, who spoke on the telephone, said, “It (directive to stop salaries) clearly shows that there is something the Federal Government is not telling the people. They are not paying us (some lecturers). So, why are they saying by November?

“What they are doing now is just blackmail and threat to see how they would weaken our members to go and enroll (on IPPIS). People who have not enrolled are not being paid; some people for eight months, some for three, going to four months. I have not been paid salary since July, while some people have not been paid since February.

“They have not paid us because of IPPIS. A few of the people that registered with IPPIS are being paid. But when they pay them, they don’t even get the full complement of their salaries; some of them claim that they get like N50,000, N60,000, and we are talking about senior lecturers and above.

“A professor told me that what he is getting is N100,000 (as monthly salary) and yet they want to put more people into that. But we have resolved that we will not succumb to this blackmail.”