- By Demola Atobaba, Ado-Ekiti
A medical group under the umbrella of the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH) chapter of the Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association (MDCAN), has lauded the steps taken by the Governor of the state, Mr Biodun Oyebanji for his timely intervention on one the major issues affecting the hospital with the recent increased funding to the health sector in the state.
Leadership of the Association gave the commendation at a press conference held in the hospital premises to express gratitude to the governor’s kind gesture, thereby described him a man with large heart.
Addressing newsmen, the MDCAN Chairman in Ekiti state, Dr Adeniran Atiba in a press release jointly signed by MDCAN Secretary, Dr Biodun Olagbuji stayed that; “We have always believed that our Governor has the highest interest in promoting EKSUTH, therefore, we are not surprised this (increased subvention) is coming from him.
“The Governor is in fact, a workers-friendly leader who places high priority on the wellbeing of his constituents. Not surprisingly too, he named Dr Oyebanji Filani, a visionary intelligent and hardworking colleague as the Commissioner for Health and Human Resources who pledged to step in and help EKSUTH solving its various challenges. “We firmly feel that he played a crucial role in actualizing recent positive development from His Excellency” he noted.
The Association spoke about several efforts made in the past with critical stakeholders working with the Governor prior to the election that brought him to office deliberating on the different challenges facing EKSUTH.
According to him, among the issues discussed was; “It was mentioned that in order for the management to completely pay our salaries, there would be a significant need to increase subvention to EKSUTH because for over four years, we have been receiving ‘amputated salaries’.
“In order to achieve this, our subvention has just been increased and we anticipate that hospital management will use it to defray all employee salaries and arrears as well as other outstanding emoluments. The era of collecting amputated salaries is gone” he concluded.
The association, however, expressed displeasured over the ability of the hospitals’ management to meet the minimum expectations of workers in the hospital especially in the area of defraying huge unpaid salaries and arrears.
Answering questions from journalists on the issue of amputated salaries, Dr. Atiba who clarifies the matter said; “When they pay salaries, they don’t remit all the deductions to where they supposed to remit them to. Typical example is mortgage Bank loan. Some of our members subscribed to mortgage Bank. They have taken the loans and paying their mortgage but as we speak, they (management) have actually deducted up to 25 months that they have not remitted to mortgage Bank. So this is one of the amputated salaries we are referring to”
Atiba further said, “Cooperative deductions are all there. They have deducted all from salaries and failed to remit all to where they supposed to remit them to. Personally almost all my salary goes to Cooperative and up till now they are still owning the bank 11 months deductions to Cooperative societies. So in this case I’m being paid half of my salary after a period of four years aside from association dues. These are what amount to amputated salaries we are saying”.
The union leader opined that with the recent increment in the subvention given to the hospital, management should have no reason not to pay workers salaries in full such that if it has to deduct anything, such deductions should be remitted to where they should be remitted to.
He stated further the Associations’ resolve with the management thus: “What we actually advised the management on is that, now that government has increased subvention, henceforth right from last month, we should actually be paid our gross fully paid and subsequently the left over from the subvention or from the IGR, they should just give us a schedule of payment over a period of time”
Speaking on why the association decided to go public with their demands, Atiba disclosed that the move became necessary because of the attitude of the management towards the workers demand.
He said, his association really appreciates the governor Oyebanji for his timely intervention in EKSUTH, noting that the association pledged their total commitment and dedication towards offering the best health services to the institution.
His words: “When you are faced with your management and you are getting some form of resistance, you have to go beyond them. I want to tell you that after all the management convened a meeting of stakeholders to deliberate on the increment in the subvention, we were told in that meeting that the new subvention might still not be enough, but from our own calculation, we are saying the subvention should be enough.
Infact, we are saying; pay our salaries first, whatever is left can be deployed to the running of the hospital. As I have told you Mr Governor has done his bit. He has tried to improve our subvention to what we are receiving now. Any attempt not to use that money to pay our salary in full, we are going to resist. That I can assure you”, Dr Atiba insisted.
