NARD accuses Hospitals of hiking personnel cost

National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has accused hospital managements of fixing “spurious personnel cost” into budgetary proposals and denying doctors full pay since January 2014.

NARD said hospitals withholding doctors’ emoluments were disregarding collective bargaining agreements signed and federal civil service circulars, sparking a web of corruption and mismanaged responsible for continued pockets of strike.

NARD president Dr Muhammad Askira said in a press briefing in Abuja yesterday that the corruption has been the backbone of most of the crises in the health sector.

Dr Askira said at least Federal hospitals are still on strike and doctors at Federal Medical Centre, Kaduna suspended their strike after they discovered “huge sum of monies being siphoned in the guise of personnel cost.”

In a letter to the health permanent secretary, he said doctors at FMC Kaduna were “receiving death threat SMS and harassment.”

NARD named three hospitals as cooking up spurious personnel costs in their budget proposals for 2015 but refusing to pay full emoluments agreed.