By Victor Ahiuma-Young

THERE is no end in sight as lecturers in all the four tertiary institutions owned by Osun state and the government have continued to flex muscles over unremitted pension deduction and age of retirement for the lecturers.

The strike by the lecturers is in the sixth week.

While the government said what it has offered on the demands lecturers is the best they can get from any administration, the lecturers  have insisted they would not return to work until their demands are fully met by government.

The workers under the umbrella of Council of Academic Staff Unions of Osun State Owned Tertiary Institutions, CASUOSTI, are demanding for remittance of deductions of their contributory pension scheme and approval of 65 years retirement age for academic staff of the affected institutions among others.

Commissioner for Human Resources and Capacity Building, Ms. Mobolaji Akande, while speaking in Osogbo, said the demands of the lecturers had been met to a very reasonable extent despite the lean resources of the State.

Tertiary institutions

According to her, “The workers in the tertiary institutions must be sincere in their clamour and demands. The main issues which are the implementation of the CONPCASS salary structure, heavy tax law, contributory pension, elongation of the age of retirement from 60 to 65, and understaffing have all been dealt with by the State government’s negotiating team and the workers got the best. Please, recall that the implementation of the Consolidated Polytechnics and College of Education Academic Salary Structure was approved by the Federal Government in 2009 and was also adopted by the previous administration of the State in the same year but was never implemented.

It was this Government that approved the implementation up to 80 percent from the zero level that we inherited. We have offered the workers an increase from 80 to 85 percent which was further increased to 90 percent, yet they still rejected it at the last meeting we had. This offer is the maximum we can pay considering our meagre resources, particularly as we are going to recruit more lecturers as part of their requests.