from The National Wed 14th Nov

"Chaos looming over strike action
By YEHIURA HRIEHWAZI. STRIKE action by academic staff of the University of Technology is expected to turn worse with lecturers saying they will refuse to mark examination papers and select enrolments for 2007 academic year.The National Academic Staff Association, NASA, executives told The National yesterday that their actions would have “dire consequence for 2007 graduation, enrolment and registration of students for next year’s academic year”. NASA president Michael Hasagama and executive committee member Robert Songan said the union regretted resorting to this action but it felt it was duty-bound to draw the attention of the university administration and Government authorities to what it claimed was a “serious lack of competence, lack of transparency and gross misappropriation of resources”. The NASA has about 100 financial members – most of whom are senior lecturers of various disciplines at the university. They were expected to begin processing the second semester assessment of students this week but that is now likely to be delayed until their demands were met. The staff members are demanding among other things payment of their superannuation contributions into their Nasfund accounts.They said their pay slips showed superannuation deductions since early this year “but Nasfund tells us there is nothing in there for us,” Mr Hasagama said. “The university has been deducting that money, but we don’t know where all that money is. ”In addition, the staff also complained yesterday of a savings and loans society for staff which the university had managed but was forced to shut down by Bank of PNG because it was too small a workforce to operate.They are demanding the university administration to explain the whereabouts of the funds from the savings and loans society. They are also demanding payments of their domestic market allowance funds.The association said it had severed all communications with the administration and it no longer had confidence in the current administration. Meanwhile, NASA had also written to the Chancellor Philip Stagg and Vice- Chancellor Misty Baloiloi and outlined their concerns and were awaiting their response."