Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has said that the office of the Head of Service of the Federation is not responsible for designing and approving career growth development documents for polytechnic lecturers in the country.
ASUP also argued that the Head of Service is neither the employer of polytechnic lecturers nor the regulator of technical and vocational education in the country. Hence, its attempts to impose career development paths on lecturers as contained in the recently released polytechnic scheme of service was unacceptable.
LEADERSHIP Friday reports that the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) released a copy of the approved reviewed polytechnic service scheme in June of this year, as approved by the federal government.
Similarly, dissatisfied with the scheme‘s provisions, the union issued a 15-day ultimatum to the federal government earlier this month to review the scheme of service approved for polytechnics in the country.
The acting chairperson of ASUP, Federal Polytechnic Bauchi chapter, Esther Adebitan, told journalists in Bauchi that the federal government should suspend provisions containing these anomalies to review them or “face diverse forms of industrial action by our union.”
Adebitan said the document approved as the Scheme of Service for Polytechnics contains significant and fundamental deviations from the document prepared by stakeholders in the sector and coordinated by the NBTE through a series of consultative engagements for over six years.
She added, „The document‘s approval route, which gave rise to the significant and contentious alterations, is legally questionable as the role of The Office of The Head of Civil Service of The Federation as an approving authority is unchallengeable.
„Our conviction is that The Head of Civil Service of The Federation cannot be preparing or approving a document on the career development of staff, including the assessment of such staff for career growth, when she is neither an employer nor regulator,“ she said.
Adebitan said the controversial document raised concerns about the status of Nigerian polytechnics, adding that the status of polytechnics in tertiary educational institutions is settled in different laws and policy instruments.
She added, „Therefore, the introduction of sub-tertiary-level qualífications, in this instance, the National Skills Qualifications (NSQ) as mandatory conditions for academic staff career growth is a misnomer as the possession of NSQ has no meaningful contribution to the delivery of the contents of the curricula of the different programs offered at the tertiary education level in polytechnics.“
ASUP argued that the scheme of service entrenched unwholesome and condemnable discrimination against holders of Higher National Diploma certificates as against holders of Bachelor‘s degrees from universities and was further entrenched in the document.
„We affirm that Polytechnics cannot discriminate against its products in the manner prescribed in this document. This is evident in the provision of discriminatory entry points into the lecturer cadre for degree holders and HND holders, lowering of the career progression bar of holders of HND both in the teaching and non-teaching cadres, discrimination against holders of HND in the appointment of registrars and bursars irrespective of their possession of higher-level certificates; classification of technologists as non-teaching staff and so on,“ she insisted.
