LUTH interns protest non-payment of 7 months salaries

Doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals on internship at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, on Monday protested the non-payment of their salary for seven months.

The junior medical professionals, in their white overalls, were seen carrying placards with inscriptions such as, “5,040 hours without PAY” 3-7 months without Pay and Food” during a protest within the LUTH premises.

They said they had commenced an indefinite strike until the Federal Government decided to pay all their arrears and salaries.

According to some of the doctors, who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity for fear of victimisation by the hospital management, most of them have not being paid since they began their internship in January.

They said that though they had complained several times through their association, they were yet to get any response from the hospital management and the government.

One of the interns said most of them had not been captured by the International Personal Payroll Information System which the Federal Government introduced for the payment of its staff salaries last year and that there were various irregularities in the payment structure for the few that had been captured by the computation system.

Another house officer, who addressed the interns, told our correspondent that non-payment of junior medical workers’ salaries had been a problem even before the IPPIS was introduced.

He said, “We will not go back to work until everyone of us has been paid. We work day and night in these hospitals without complaints but they won’t pay us. It seems the only thing government knows is strike. We work like slaves, yet we are still struggling to feed.

“We cannot pay our rent. For those living outside the premises, we cannot afford to transport ourselves and they expect us to keep quiet because we are interns.”

However, the Nigerian Medical  Association  has given the Federal Government a 21-day ultimatum to resolve the non-payment of salaries of house officers and locum doctors omitted in the IPPIS.

The association, in a communiqué at the end of its National Executive Council Meeting in Sokoto, Sokoto State, said it would no longer tolerate the recurrent irregularities in the implementation of IPPIS in payment of doctors.