The National
Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), has embarked on a peaceful protest to press home their demands over non-payment of salaries.
Speaking to newsmen last Monday during the protest, the chapter president, UPTH, Dr Mike Assor, said the union’s action was due to non-implementation of the agreement reached with the hospital’s management on underpayment and non-payment of their October 2016 salaries by the hospital management.
“The contentious issues were poor state of the hospital, underpayment, payment of salaries for doctors and house officers”, he said.
He enumerated others to include incessant cases of robberies and inadequate funding of various units despite adequate generation of funds through hospital services.
He disclosed further that the hospital management reneged on all agreements reached so far, adding that the protest will eventually culminate in total withdrawal of services with or without further prior information.
Reacting to the allegations by the doctors, the Chief Medical Director, UPTH, Dr Aaron Ojule, said the hospital management was not owing the doctors.
He said rather, the hospital management was queried by the federal Ministry of Health for paying the doctors August and September salaries while they were on strike.
“They were on strike and the House of Represtatives Committee on Health intervened and government was not very happy over the flouting of the no work, no play rule.
The management of UPTH was queried for paying them, and since government was not comfortable with that, they asked that those salaries should be recovered”, he said.
The action of the medical practitioners was coming barely two months after they called off a two-month old strike.