The strike action embarked upon by the Joint Health Staff Union (JOHESU) worsened on Thursday as patients were compulsorily discharged from the Jos University Teaching Hospital.
It would be recalled that the workers had embarked on strike about a month ago as a result of poor services, lack of basic facilities as well as the implementation of the no-work-no-pay policy of the management of the hospital.
This action has prompted the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), JUTH, to call on President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in the lingering trade dispute between the doctors and management of the institution, failing which they would join other workers in the strike.
JOHESU’s action had paralysed activities at the hospital for weeks now. They are also demanding the resignation of the Chief Medical Director of the Hospital, Prof. Edmund Banwat.
Apart from the strike, the workers had been staging peaceful protests at the premises of the hospital to bring the attention of the Federal Government to what the JOHESU Chairman, Plateau State Chapter, Mr. Mustapha Kabiru described as “total system failure and insensitivity” to their plight by the management of the JUTH.
Addressing journalists in Jos, Thursday, the President of ARD, Dr. Kefas Ibrahim, said that they will not hesitate to ground the entire activities to a halt if President Muhammad Buhari did not intervene.
He said that what was happening in JUTH was not different from what had been happening in other institutions, but that of JUTH had prolonged because of the style of the management.
Kefas accused the ministry of health of complicity in the strike as all efforts to make the management see reasons were being frustrated by health ministry officials who appeared to be backing the CMD.
He said that in the past three years, JUTH had not been working efficiently.
“This is to call the attention of the Federal Government on the happenings in JUTH. In the past three years, the management of JUTH has not been delivering on their mandate as no year had passed without JUTH being on strike for at least six months and the management has shown incompetence in managing the institution.
“Most of the problems bedeviling the health sector is not peculiar to JUTH, but the management had shown incompetence in resolving the issues. For instance, of all the institutions that had embarked on strike, it’s only JUTH that had insisted on no-work-no-pay, whereas whenever we want to embark on strike we give at least three notices and yet when we go on strike the management would insist on not paying us.”
On the discharge of patients from the hospital, Secretary General of ARD, Dr. Paul Agboh, told our newsmen in an interview in Jos that patients had to be discharged because the nurses and other paramedical staff were not working.
He said, “We had to discharge some patients and leave those who are critically ill because there is nobody to attend to them. But the situation may become more severe if by next week, there is no intervention from the president.”
Meanwhile, when DAILYPOST visited the hospital, patients were seen leaving in their numbers.
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