Casual workers at the University of Bhar al-Ghazal have gone on strike in the main campus in Wau, demanding pay rise and promotions.

The workers stopped working since yesterday, saying their concerns are not being considered by the government.

They want transport allowances that they said were removed and have not been reinstated. They also want promotions to new grades.

This is the second time the workers have gone on strike in about a month over similar concerns. It is also the third strike the workers have staged since they started raising the concerns last year.

Some of them have been speaking to Eye Radio about the resumption of the strike.

“If all this things are implemented – our transport allowance in accordance with pay arrears payment, and also promotions – we will call of our strike,” one of the workers told Eye Radio.

“The problems of Bahr Elghazal University – I have seen you’re ignoring it but we are demanding in this third strike from you to bring the committee to come here and tell us the truth,” another said.

The workers also want the removal of the Vice Chancellor Samson Wasara.

In response, Wasara says the strike is illegal.

He has called for an end to the strike.

“Their representative was at the ministry yesterday with the undersecretary and they were told clearly that they don’t have anything at all called transport allowances, because it is not there actually in the salary structure passed by the parliament and implemented in the all five universities,” Wasara said.

“And there is no any other university which has actually this transport allowance, and he (undersecretary) directed that person even to check with Upper Nile University which is in Juba,” he said.

The Vice Chancellor said his administration has also “been able to meet the representative of the Education Committee in the national assembly, who came here and we told him actually the whole story.”

“We see what the trade union is doing is a provocative because I don’t know which article in trade union act of 2013 gives them the right to request actually for removal of heads of institutions because this is where they are actually not concentrating,” he said.

Last month, the casual workers were asked to raise their concerns to the national government in Juba.

But they said they would end the strike if it were the national government asking them to be patient due to the economic crisis.

Deng Dimo in Wau and Magdoline Joseph in Juba contributed to this story.