The employees of the University of El Geneina in West Darfur State have protested against a decision by Vice Chancellor Al-Tayeb Ali Ahmed not to pay the salaries of university employees who reside in El Geneina.
Ahmed ordered that staff would be paid in person in neighboring Chad and this irked the workers.
In a statement on Monday, the university staff rejected the move to withhold the salaries of those residing in El Geneina.
The war forced a large number of university workers to seek refuge in Chad
The statement described the move as collective punishment for workers because the salary cannot even cover travel and accommodation costs and entry and exit fees to Chad in addition to the fact that there is no need to pay salaries in another country while the employees are present inside Sudan.
The statement explained that the employees rejected Ahmed’s conditions because they were not based on any law and were unprecedented.
The staff revealed that the vice chancellor selected some of the workers in El Geneina and paid them and described this as a divide-and-rule policy and called on the Ministry of Higher Education to intervene immediately to resolve the matter because the university is neither a military institution nor a tribal body to be an arena for settling scores and healing.
They called on the ministry to hold accountable those who manipulate employees’ salaries, monitor and review the university’s performance, and prevent money manipulation.