LUTH doctors seek Minister’s intervention to avert strike

Doctors at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital are seeking the urgent intervention of the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole to avert a disruption of services at the nation’s busiest hospital.

 The doctors have served notice to down tools unless the hospital management finds a means to pay their two months salary for September and October. No fewer than 646 doctors classified as non-regular staff are yet to receive salaries for the two months although other categories of staff have been paid. Those excluded comprise house officers, honorary consultants and resident doctors.

 Sources at LUTH blamed the problem on “a shortfall in 2018 personnel budget on the GIFMIS platform” which uploaded N4.867 billion personnel budget to the hospital as against budget submission of N7,592 billion. The hospital is now in a dilemma on how to find N2,724 billion shortfall to meet its wage bill for the rest of the year.

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 Officials at the Budget Office in Abuja claimed that “there is no cash backing for this payment because budgetary allocation for LUTH has been exhausted.”

 A top management official at LUTH who declined to be quoted said “there is unnecessary tension within the hospital as all doctors are threatening to go on strike, especially now that some other category of staff have received their October salaries.”