Salary deductions: UniIlorin teaching hospital resident doctors commence warning

The University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) chapter of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) yesterday commenced a 5-day warning strike over deduction of their salaries by the management of the hospital.

The doctors accused the management of illegal deduction of their salaries while their counterparts in other teaching hospitals were getting their full pay.

Some of the doctors carried placards with inscriptions, ‘We have suffered enough,’ ‘Mr CMD’s disobedience of FG is illegal,’ ‘Under-payment of UITH resident doctors is deliberate by CMD,’ ‘Say no to 60% salary.’

Speaking during the protest, President of ARD, Dr Ige Kolawole, said they had not been receiving full salary since 2014 without a genuine justification.

He said, “We protested in April when our salary was cut and the CMD promised that it would be rectified but our June and July salary was not full payment and the circular that says doctors should be paid full salary came out since 2015 and we found out that doctors in other teaching hospitals are not being owed. Resident doctors and house officers are being shortchanged. They have been deducting our salaries since 2014 and in January this year, the CMD said he was going to employ new house officers of about 150, which led to reduction of salaries of some doctors.”

The association also accused the centre of sending residents out of training because the person has spent six years, contending that nobody could finish residency training in six years in Nigeria today.

Contacted, the PRO of the UITH, Mrs Funmilayo Omojasola, said the chief medical director was not around and that his deputy and other management staff were in a meeting. She promised to get back to our correspondent with their reaction but she had not done that up to press time.