IMSUTH doctors threaten strike over unpaid salaries

RESIDENT doctors at the Imo State University Teaching Hospital (IMSUTH), Orlu, have threatened to down tools if the Imo State Government fails to clear their five-month salary arrears this week.

Speaking in Owerri, president of the chapter’s Association of Resident Doctors, Dr. Sampson Ajekunle, the past president, Dr. Valentine Opkara, and President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Orlu branch, Dr. Chidiebere Okwara, said that members had stayed without salaries since February.

According to them, the state has given no reason for this, even when the Federal Government has resolved the issue of “Keeping and Relativity.”

Nevertheless, Governor Rochas Okorocha says his administration has started clearing the arrears since last week, while urging all genuine workers to be patient. He blamed the delay on lack of funds due to drop in allocation.

However, Ajekunle said the association has written about four letters to the state government on the issue without results, and has now resolved to proceed on industrial action on Monday, July 20, if they are not paid within the window.

He said they are sad that government owed other workers only one month but not considering their case. The problem, the trio stressed, was affecting them psychologically and could lead to complications, including the death of patients.

“How would a house officer work without salary for five and half months and you are talking about oath? You need to be psychologically and mentally balanced to render service,” Ajekunle said.

“Psychological issue is also a medical issue. Poor state of your psychology is a mental state. I don’t see why a doctor should be owed. I don’t know if it is when doctors begin to drop dead on the roads that government will know about their state.”

Contributing, Okwara regretted that despite the decision reached with one of the governor’s aides during a dialogue some months back on “Keeping and Relativity,” nothing has happened. According to him, some of their colleagues had no money to sustain them during their last medical examinations in Ibadan.

He noted: “If people claim that they are important, the doctors who attend to life should also be respected. To attend to a patient, you must be alive, healthy physically and mentally. A worker is worthy of his wages. We have not put commonsense into this.”