LUTH doctors begin two-day warning strike

The Lagos University Teaching Hospital

Medical doctors at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, this morning, began a two-day warning strike over shortage of doctors, unpaid salaries and victimisation of medical doctors of all cadres by the hospital management.

The doctors under the auspices of Association of Resident Doctors, ARD, LUTH, who staged a peaceful protest within the hospital premises as part of their actions to press home their demands threatened to commence an indefinite strike should the management fail to accede to their demands.

The doctors who were carrying placards with inscriptions such as “They want to silence us,” “no to victimisation’”, “Hungry doctor is a dangerous doctor, pay us,” “Enforce our security, we don’t feel safe,” “We are overworked and underemployed” among others said the recent events at LUTH portend grave danger to the medical doctors.

Addressing a press conference shortly after the protest, the President of ARD-LUTH, Dr Kayode Makinde, accused the management of lackadaisical attitude towards the yearnings of the doctors.

According to Makinde, the doctors are protesting over inadequate security in the hospital, non-payment of five months’ salary and benefits, acute shortage of medical doctors of all cadres, no refund of examination and update fee to the doctors for five years among others.

“We asked for a minimum requirement to ensure that we have some element of safety in our hospital environment, which is to light up the hospital especially the dark portions. We even gave a reasonable length of time of six weeks, which has since expired but we got nothing. Shall we then wait until another preventable tragedy befalls us? The painful death of our brother and colleague, Dr Stephen Urueye is still very fresh in our memory.

“We are owed salaries, some up to five months. Our members have been promoted over a year but the attached benefits have not been paid or underpaid.

“When we decided to discuss these issues and possibly proffer solutions, the management then descended into the dark abyss of spying and other convert surveillance moves and issued queries based on such illegality,” he explained.

Responding on behalf of the hospital management, the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee of the hospital, Dr Olufemi Fasanmade, said the ongoing strike has nothing to do with the issues they raised but because some of their members were issued queries and they don’t want to respond.

“They are also demanding that the management withdraws the queries and apologise. But to give the strike acceptability, they padded the issue with other matters so that it will appear as if they are fighting for something else to the public.

“They claimed that the management spied on them. But they forgot that some of the children of the management members are part of the forum and some of their members who disagreed with them forwarded the proceedings of their meetings to the management.

Fasanmade further admitted that the doctors were only owed one month but affirmed that nobody is being owed for more than five months among the doctors.

Fasanmade also disagreed that insecurity is an issue in the hospital stating that the hospital has over 500 security personnel.