The Chief Medical Director, University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital, UNIMEDTH Ondo, Dr. Oluwole Ige, has described the strike embarked upon by the hospital’s resident doctors as embarrassing.
According to Dr. Ige, the move by the resident doctors was an attempt to portray the Ondo State Government as well as the hospital’s management in a bad light.
DAILY POST reported on Friday that the UNIMEDTH resident doctors had last Friday proceeded on an indefinite strike over non-payment of over five months salaries.
Meanwhile, the CMD on Sunday, punctured the claim of the doctors as he stressed that no doctor is being owed six months salary arrears.
He, however, stated that most of the doctors were being owed one or two months’ salary due to what he described as hitch within the system.
While appealing to the striking doctors to return to duty, Dr. Ige assured that arrangement had already begun for the payment of their salary arrears.
“We do not have an over-bloated workforce like it’s being said in some quarters that it affected us from payment of salaries for our doctors.
“There is no month we don’t pay salaries, we are not in crisis, we are not happy for being in the news for the wrong reasons.
“Imagine those we employed in November joining the protest? The highest month we are owing is two or three months to some newly employed doctors, not all our doctors.
“Payment of salaries to newly employed take administrative processes, we had several meetings and we promised to pay all arrears before the end of next week.
“The strike is uncalled for. It is designed to ridicule and embarrass the management and the state government.
“We have not finished the process of collating what is left from individual salaries, some will even resume and leave before the payday, we always ensure they resume, start working properly before we started paying,” he said.
