Emmanuel Ugwu in Umuahia
No fewer than 460 workers of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU) and their dependants are in for a gloomy period as the management of the institution has set in motion the process of sacking them on the ground that the last administration employed them without following due process.
Already, the university management has stopped the payment of salaries of the affected workers and asked them to reapply to undergo fresh screening in what is seen as a subtle way of offloading the workers.
“There is a bit of a mess that need to be sorted out,” the Pubic Relations Officer of MOUAU, Mrs. Adanma Odefa, said, adding that the problem was created by “the Professor Hillary Edeoga administration (which) hired over 460 people improperly without going the through the right procedure”.
“We have this 460 people who were given temporary appointment and the procedure usually is when a staff has a temporary appointment it elapses automatically after one year if it is not renewed. The appointment of staff in question elapsed on February this year,” she said.
However a member of staff of the institution, who preferred not to be named, told THISDAY that “what we are witnessing now is the triumph of a section of the academic staff that are hell bent on rubbishing every thing that Prof Edeoga did including the job opportunities he created for hundreds of people.”
Details later…
