FIJ
After several months of working without pay, some of the embattled staff of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC) have been sacked.
Photos obtained by FIJ showed the embattled workers holding placards with inscriptions on the hospital’s premises on Thursday: “Pay us our salary OAUTHC,” “Our demand is clear. Pay our 14 months salary,” “Our 14 month salary or nothing else,” “Say no to injustice,” and “We own this country together.”
A source, who does not want to be named, told FIJ that the management had instructed certain workers to desist from labelling themselves as hospital staff via a memo issued on Wednesday.
FIJ earlier reported how workers at the hospital were owed several months’ pay after management, led by Olumuyiwa Owojuyigbe, a former CMD of the hospital, exceeded the approved waiver for its recruitment exercise between 2022 and 2023.
The federal ministry of health had granted the OAUTHC approval to recruit 450 health workers into various cadres. Instead, the hospital employed 2,423 staff, an action that prevented these workers from being captured on the federal government’s payment platform that would have made them eligible for salaries.
Months after the recruitment exercise, the Ministry of Health probed the process and found that job racketeering had taken place under the immediate past chief medical director, among other irregularities.
