CROSS RIVER NEWS:Doctors at UCTH vow not to return to work

 Despite that resident doctors in other Teaching Hospitals in the country have since suspended their strike action yet their counterparts in University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) and other medical workers have resolved not to heed the national call but to further elongate theirs.

Their reason is that the hospital has owed them outstanding salaries before now.

Doctors spoken to at the tertiary hospital who did not want their names in print have said that they would only return to work when all their outstanding salaries of six months and other entitlements, including training or course fees which many of them attended over many months ago, are fully paid and refunded.

“We are owed at least six months salaries. How can we continue to work without pay! That is not even all; many of our colleagues that were sent to further training and other courses have not been paid the attendant fees and other entitlements.

“Even though other resident doctors in other parts of the country suspended their  strike action over the same issue about three weeks ago, here at UCTH we have resolved not to return to work until all our entitlements, especially six months salaries are fully paid”, the doctor said.

When Daily Trust spoke with the chief medical director of the hospital, Dr Thomas Agan when the national strike persisted, he had said that even though the resident doctors were on strike, there was arrangement by the hospital management for medical consultants to stand in.

But the handful of medical staff our reporter met said that the consultants rarely come resulting in the high number of  rejection of critical cases at the hospital and unspeakable number of deaths every day at the hospital.

However, it was noticed that by special arrangements, the doctors and other medical workers would accept critical cases and  offer expert treatment.

There is no electricity power at the hospital. the handful of patients rely on candles and lanterns while the nurses also rely on their torchlight from their handsets to attend to the patients.

When Dr Agan spoke with journalists weeks before the national strike, he had lamented that the hospital relied much on their electricity generators where they spent millions of naira monthly on fuel and diesel.