UTech working to fix payroll issues amid staff protest, says university president

President of the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), Dr Kevin Brown, said the institution’s technical team is working overtime to resolve issues that have led to the late payment of salaries for its academic staff.

The staff members staged a sit-in on Thursday to protest the late payment of their March salary.

Expressing his disappointment at the protest action of the staff, Brown told The Gleaner that the university is nonetheless “working hard to fix the problem” by today.

“The expectation is that by today, I hope we would have made progress in getting the technical glitches fixed. The late payment is not because of a lack of funds. It's purely due to a technical fault that we are having with the payroll software,” he said.

Additionally, he said the university is going through a series of retroactive payments, which is further burdening the payment system.

“When you now add retroactive payment to the normal payroll, unfortunately, the software that we have occasionally causes a few issues, and so that sometimes causes a few issues in the payroll,” Brown said.

He said UTech is currently embarking on a reset transformation plan, which includes upgrading the ICT software on campus.

A big part of this, he said, is to change out the human resource software and the payroll software.

Also, he stated that the university is on the verge of introducing the use of the Government’s HR tool, a more modern software, which should help in resolving these issues.

President of the UTech staff union, Dr Clavery Allen, told The Gleaner that delays in salary payment have been an ongoing issue for quite some time.

The union has approximately 380 members.

“It’s been a longstanding issue where the pay date at UTech has been missed, many months, so persons have to be waiting days to get their salaries, and it's exacerbated by the fact that if you are not paid through NCB, then the norm is that you have to wait an extra day for your payment,” he said.

Brown, in the meantime, noted that not all academic staff are taking part in the sit-in.

He, however, expressed concern about the impact of this action on students who will be sitting their exams next month.

He also asked for patience from the academic staff as the university works to fix the issue.

- Sashana Small

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