The Association of Resident Doctors, Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC) has urged the University management to urgently pay arrears of salaries and allowances owed to her members in the state.
The association also lamented the state of acute manpower shortages in the tertiary health institutions in Nigeria occasioned by the ongoing brain drain in the health sector.
The call was contained in a communiqué issued at the Emergency General Meeting (EGM) held to appraise the welfare challenges facing members of the association.
In the communiqué, which was read by the NARD President, Dr Orji Innocent, the association lamented the number of unpaid salaries owed to over 50 doctors.
Parts of the communique reads, “Over 50 doctors who have been employed by the hospital over the past 7-8 months are yet to be paid salaries. The EGM noted that this is not only appalling, but it is unconscionable and criminal for doctors to be working for that long without getting their earned pay.
“The EGM noted the insensitivity and tone-deafness of the OAUTHC management under the outgone Acting Chief Medical Director to pay this group of doctors, despite the massive brain in the system.
“The EGM observed that this group of doctors are at their wits end both physically and mentally as they have to beg for money to feed themselves and their families.
“The EGM noted that the attention of the hospital management has been drawn severally to the plight of these doctors, but they have been callously ignored by the hospital management.”
The association, therefore, resolved for “The ARD OAUTHC with great pain and in the interest of peace, is hereby extending her ultimatum to the OAUTHC management by two weeks starting from Friday 30th June 2023. This extension is to allow the newly inaugurated OAUTHC management to find urgent solutions and pay these doctors all the salary arrears they are owed.
“The ARD OAUTHC categorically states that at the expiration of the two-week ultimatum, industrial harmony will no longer be guaranteed, if these issues are not resolved. The OAUTHC management is thereby put on notice.
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