Employees of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital have accused its Chief Medical Director, Prof. Akin Osibogun, of seeking an elongation of tenure.
An allegation Osibogun quickly refuted.
In a statement entitled ‘LUTH workers say no to elongation of tenure of CMD’ by some workers at the hospital, who pleaded anonymity for fear of being sanctioned, Osibogun’s tenure would expire on October 18, 2014.
It reads in part, “After spending eight years in office, the CMD is working to extend his tenure by another six months to one year.
“This development has been viewed with sadness and trepidation by health care workers in the hospital. Some of them noted that this is capable of further plunging the foremost institution into crisis.
“The past eight years of the CMD’s administration has been characterised by victimisation, intimidation, harassment and total lack of commitment to workers’ welfare. Also the image of the hospital has suffered greatly, due to decaying infrastructure and chronic lack and shortage of materials and equipment to work with.”
The hospital workers added that, under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Unions and the Association of Resident Doctors, they had repeatedly embarked on “needless strikes due to poor working conditions and a continuous denial of their rights in form of promotion and other incentives.”
“Our grouse against the CMD ranges from delays in salary payment; continuous issuing of letters of premature exit from residency training, in spite of the new directives from the Federal Government; deliberate delays in payment of all allowances; and paying the lowest amount in the country,” it said.
When contacted, Osibogun said, “Let me immediately confirm to you that there is absolutely no plan for elongation of the CMD’s tenure. As I write this, plans are already at an advanced stage for the advert for the position.
“I urge you to watch the newspapers in the next few days where you can expect to see the advert. For the avoidance of doubt, I will be leaving the office on the exact date of tenure completion.
“All the other fabrications are obviously written with intent to malign. I urge you not to lend yourself to the activities intended to malign anybody. A simple test is to ask the petitioner to tell you which months or how many months’ salaries are being (owed). The hospital does not owe any month.”
He said salaries were paid directly from Abuja through a programme called the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
“They want to distract one and take one’s time. Usually, IPPIS sends money into individual accounts. They don’t send it to me. They pay all the staff directly as from around 25th. The only people who are not enrolled on IPPIS now are the doctors.
“The person has said I am favouring doctors over other health workers. The truth is the first people that are paid are those on IPPIS. So, it is when they credit people’s accounts directly that they send the money for doctors to LUTH’s account.
“It is from LUTH’s account that we disburse to the doctors. That then takes another five days. That is why the doctors get paid later than the other people. So, you can see that the logic of what the person is saying is just to malign one’s character,” he added. Punch
