Hundreds of staff and students of the University of the South Pacific turned up to support a strike action in protest of the alleged ongoing poor leadership at the university.

The Association of the USP Staff and the USP Staff Union have expressed deep dissatisfaction following the recent release of the Special Council meeting outcome, which they say misleadingly framed serious grievances as mere HR issues to be investigated rather than investigating the USP Vice Chancellor Pal Ahluwalia.

Staff and students turned up in black and white today at the University of the South Pacific, to participate in strike.

The strike is based on the result of our secret ballot conducted in August, which is the removal of the University’s Vice Chancellor – Prof Pal Ahluwalia.

President of the Association of the USP Staff Rosie Fatiaki says the Staff Unions were not satisfied with the response from the Special Council Meeting.

“Collectively the members of the USP Staff members with the Union unanimously agreed to go on strike today. We hoe the Council get the matter resolved”, Fatiaki said.

She says, the unions are clear : the Vice Chancellor Ahluwalia must be removed as no credible investigation can take place as long as he remains in control of the institution.

They find it unacceptable that a person under investigation for leadership failures is still allowed to continue in the role as this is gross poor governance.

“The Unions claimed that there hasn’t been any progress of any investigation and the Council meeting is next month, and the report is expected to go to Council. The Unions wants to see that there is progress made”, Fatiaki said.

“And for any investigation to happen the person under investigation should not be in any position of power. That is the concern from the staff members. As we understand, its almost four weeks since the Council met and there hasn’t been any progress in terms of getting the investigation off the ground”, she added.

The unions say they have been raising concerns for months regarding the Vice Chancellor’s management of the University and disclosed in an independent Report on his performance to the Council in November last year.

The two unions say while they respectfully waited for the Special Council to act, the outcome from the Secretariat is ambiguous and fails to honestly reflect the core issue – Vice Chancellor Ahluwalia’s leadership that is running the University into the ground.

“Strike is an industrial action and so there was a process that was a followed. We got the mandate to take strike action, so today there was almost 200 staff that joined up here for the strike”, Fatiaki said.

The unions say this delay is unacceptable, especially given that it was agreed that the investigation report be presented to the November 2024 Council meeting.

They say at this rate, it is evident that the process is being deliberately manipulated and stalled.

Meanwhile the University has come out to say that they understand that Fiji-based staff of the two unions concerned have decided to go on strike.

They say this is over an issue that the University management considers to be outside their respective collective contracts and conditions of employment.

USP states that during this time, support for our students remains their utmost priority.