LAUTECH doctors bemoan half salary payment

The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, has bemoaned the payment of half salary to resident doctors, for three out of the seven months being owed them, by the Oyo State government.

Contained in a statement by its President, Dr Sebastine Oiwoh and General Secretary, Dr Ayobami Alabi, the association also chided the failure of the state government to fund the doctors’ residency training and install requisite equipments in the institution.

The association listed the attendant toll of the development on the state as the dearth of specialists, fractured productivity, worsening health indices and poor health delivery by the resident doctors.

Consequently, the association wondered while the resident doctors were singled out for half salary payment whereas other doctors and health workers received their full salaries.

The statement partly read, “We beckon on the listening ears and tender heart of our Governor Abiola Ajimobi not to single our members out amidst other health workers in Oyo State civil service. All other doctors and health workers in the state civil service are receiving full salary. They have been paid the full salaries from January to March 2016, while we received half of the payments made.

“We want to appeal the recently implemented decision to pay only doctors and other staff of LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, 50 per cent of our salary after being owed seven months.

“The state government has reneged in its promise in the area of funding of residency training. It has also reneged in the installation of some essential equipment, delivery of equipment by contractors and completion of infrastructures to match the blue print of the hospital.

“The university, in the future, won’t be able to train medical students who will become medical doctors as accreditation will be lost from paucity of needed specialists.”