Ogbomoso (Oyo state) – The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, has appealed to the Oyo State Government to pay their five-month outstanding salaries.
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This is contained in a statement signed by the President of the association, Dr Seb Oiwoh, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ogbomoso on Friday.
The doctors also called on all well-meaning citizens of the state, stakeholders, elder statesmen, members of the state House of Assembly and the general public to help them prevail on the state government over the issue.
The doctors urged the government to do the needful so as to reaffirm its full commitment to residency training.
“We want a full completion and installation of infrastructure and equipment, payment of our entitlements as resident doctors.
“We also call for the payment of our salaries as members no longer have funds to come to work, feed, continue unusual self sustained residency training and social responsibility,” he said.
The NARD members said that it would be exactly five months that they last collected salary, despite rendering essential services to life.
It said that some other perennial hydra-headed problems be-devilling the hospital had hampered service delivery.
They listed such problems to include a lack of commitment to residency training, incomplete and uninstalled infrastructure.
It listed others as poor doctors’ welfare, epileptic and grossly unsatisfactory payment of salaries and other entitlement of residency training to resident doctors.
“In spite of all untoward hardship being experienced by all members of NARD, we have never relented in our resolutions and efforts to ensure the people enjoy the best of health care delivery.
“If we are being owed November and December 2015 salaries in March 2016, we cannot even project when we shall begin to receive 2016 salaries.
“The highest level of understanding and maturity been displayed by our Resident Doctors should not be used as a whip against us.
“As it stands today, our members can no longer fulfil our daily obligations not to talk of attending to other pertinent issue beckoning our attentions.
“Embarrassment has being our lot; i.e. from our children schools, our landlords and even in the market with the resultant effect of no money for food, no means of transport to work,” the statement read in part.
It said that they have ensured uninterrupted services across board, not minding their perennial as well as current problems overburdening their “very resilient and understanding members’’.
“Asking us to continue to discharge our service with maximal effort without being paid is like flogging a dead horse so as to move it on by force,” it said.
NAN recalls that LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, was inaugurated in 2011, with the mandate to deliver quality, accessible and affordable healthcare services to the host community and the country at large. (NAN)
