By Ani Ruth and Ali Hope

The Vice-Chancellor, ESUT, Professor Aloysius-Michaels Okolie has disclosed that the Enugu State Government has not increased the University’s subvention for the past two and a half decades

The Vice-Chancellor who stated his in an Interview on the backdrop of the implementation of the ₦80, 000 new minimum wage in the university, noted that the management would not be able to effectively pay the new minimum wage without an upward review in the monthly subvention the school receives from the government.

Prof Okie who acknowledged the management’s readiness to pay, added that the new minimum wage will scale up the wage bill, thus the need for review.

“If you approve new minimum wage, you have to increase subvention. For now, subvention hasn’t been increased for the past 25 years,” the VC said.

He noted that with new programmes being incorporated into the university, new challenges such as staffing would arise as well as the additional salary

“Even with all these new programmes, the subvention is just ₦136 million, and our wage bill is about N440 million.

“The local governments pay N68 million, and if you add that to the state government’s contribution, you get N204 million.

“The last time we checked, they owed us N82 million. Unremitted subvention from the local government hasn’t been updated to know if it has reached N100 million.

“As of May, they owed us over N200 million. We used JAC to ask for the money, and it’s piling up again as debt. In fact, I have to tell you that we received subvention from the state government for November on December 19. If we had waited, we would be paying staff their November salaries on December 20.

“These are the challenges. We are ready to pay the new minimum wage but we also need the state government to review the subvention we are receiving,” the Vice-Chancellor concluded