Nurses at the Jos University Teaching Hospital in Jos, Plateau State have stopped shift duties in protest against the deduction of two months shift allowances by the hospital’s management.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Nurses currently resume work at 7am and close at 3pm on working days, and stay away from work at weekends.
“We used to run three shifts – morning, afternoon and night. But we have resolved to suspend the shifts. We have resolved to all converge for morning duty and close at the same time,” a union official, Mustapha Kabir, told NAN.
Kabir, the Chairman, Joint Health Sector Union, JUTH chapter, told NAN on Friday in Jos that the Nurses had been denied two months shift allowances as punishment for the period they were on strike in March and April this year.
The two months protest had been declared to force government to pay shift allowances, which were left out when salary payments migrated to IPPIS in 2015.
Contacted, Dr. Edmund Banwat, the Chief Medical Director of JUTH, explained that the nurses had, earlier in the year, abandoned shift duties to protest the non-payment of three months allowances.
Banwat said: “When government resolved to pay the three months arrears, it left out the shift allowances because the Nurses abandoned shift duty during the protest. Government’s action is pursuant to its “no work, no pay policy.
“It is the enforcement of the ‘no work, no pay policy’ that has created the current situation where the Nurses have, again, abandoned shift duty.
“We have tried to speak with them because the hospital is not performing optimally.
“Doctors work round-the-clock to cater for the patients. They combine Nursing duties with consulting.”