By Marie-Therese Nanlong

Jos—Staff of the National Veterinary Research Institute, NVRI, Vom in Jos, Plateau State, under the Joint Unions and Associations, have begun a three-day mass protest and industrial unrest over deductions from their January and February salaries.

The said deductions are for the refund of the double salaries which the staff received in December 2014.

The aggrieved staff are demanding that the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation refund their net monthly salary deductions for January and February.

It was established that staff of the institution had received double salaries in December 2014, following President Goodluck Jonathan’s pronouncement that he had given staff in the employ of the federal government bonus.

However, some weeks after the payment, the Director of Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System, IPPIS, under the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation wrote a letter to the DG, NVRI, stating that the double payment was not a bonus as anticipated by staff but was made in error and that the money would be recovered between January and February.

After one third of their salaries were deducted in January, the union issued a two weeks ultimatum, asking IPPIS to stop further deductions in their salaries.

But the IPPIS went ahead to deduct two thirds of their February salaries to balance the December payment.

State chairman of the union, Atiku Aliyu, who spoke through the chairman, Association of Veterinary Research Officers, Mr. Timothy Woman, said: “If the payment was done in error as stated by IPPIS, then the deductions contravenes Financial Regulations 1522, Subsection (e), under Chapter 15.

“The subsection states that: ‘overpayments not involving fraud made in a previous financial year charged against the consolidated revenue fund or the development fund, it is not necessary to adjust it but the abandonment of the recovery must be registered by the Accountant-General as a loss’.

“How can two thirds of our salaries be deducted in a month for a facility we never solicited for?

“The process of recovery is very harsh, especially in the beginning of the year when most people are planning to pay house rent and school fees.”

Meanwhile, a letter from the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, dated January 8, had directed NVRI DG to recover the double payments from staff who might have exited the service after the payment of December and deposit it into an IPPIS account with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.

The letter stated that a system error in December had led to a double payment of salaries, stressing that “over payments would be recovered from the staff salary enbloc in the month of January, 2015 and credited to IPPIS transaction account with the Central Bank of Nigeria where funds for the double-paid salaries were sourced.

‘’In cases where the whole amount cannot be recovered in January 2015,  the balance will be recovered in February 2015.”