LUTH resident doctors adamant on strike over salary arrears

Activities at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos State were partially paralysed on Monday as the strike by doctors in the hospital entered its fourth day.
The doctors, under the aegis of Association of Resident Doctors, had on Friday begun the industrial action over non-payment of their three months’ salary.
Others on strike include house officers and medical officers below the rank of principal medical officers who are members of the association.
Other health workers were, however, attending to the patients at the emergency and accident and Out-Patient Department.
Only few consultants were attending to many patients on admission in the various wards visited.
Dr. Emeka Ugwu, the President of the Association of Resident Doctors, said some members had not been paid their salaries since June when the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System commenced in LUTH.
Ugwu said that the ARD had written the management and expressed its grievances over the non-payment of their salary since June.
He said: “You know there have been demonstrations by doctors who have not been paid several months of salaries.
“And it’s largely because of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System that they introduced in June and doctors need their utmost concentration at work because it is a matter of life and death.
“So, you cannot force a patient into the hand of a doctor who has not been paid, who is not well motivated and who is hungry.
“We expected that government would have responded last week.
“These doctors are still not being paid those arrears of salaries.
“The association was forced to embark on an industrial action since Friday, which is indefinite, until these doctors are paid all their arrears.
“The residents doctors and the house officers are not working and the medical officers below the ranks of principal medical officers, who are members of the association, are not working.”
Ugwu called on the Federal Government to monitor the activities of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System to address the non-payment of doctors’ salaries.
He said: “That is why we are appealing to Nigerians to help us to appeal to government to have a way of monitoring what they are doing over there in the IPPIS office.
“So that they don’t bring a lot of crisis into the health sector and other sectors where this payment system is going to be introduced.”
Hope Nwawolo, the Public Relations Officer, LUTH, said the problem arose from the newly adopted Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
Nwawolo said: “The hospital has been enrolled in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, which means that the salaries of all employees come from Abuja.
“In other words, the Accountant-General’s office in Abuja sends down salaries and this started in June.
“When LUTH engages new people, they are supposed to go through medical screening and it is only after the screening that they are eventually enrolled in the system.
“We let them know during their orientation that they cannot be paid except they go through the screening, but some of them delayed the screening for some months.
“So, perhaps most of the people that have not been paid from January are those who have not completed their screening.
“The management is in touch with the office of the Accountant-General and any information needed to rectify this has been taken there.
“They are currently working to ensure that every employee gets his or her salary.”
Nwawolo said that LUTH was a pilot institution for the programme, adding: “This is why it seems that only LUTH’s house officers are affected.”