The Federal Government has raised the alarm that it had discovered that many medical doctors who have left the country in search of greener pastures, in other climes, are still on the pay rolls of public hospitals.
Director General of the Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, stated this on Thursday, at a meeting organised by the an Ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives, to address the strike action by National Association of Resident Doctors ( NARD).
Akabueze said strikes by the doctors were affecting the country negatively.
Akubueze said: “When you look at the nominal role, many of the people who are said to have exited, to have “japaed” are still on the nominal roll of the hospitals because…some of them are taking study leave, some of them are taking leave of absence and they remain on the nominal roll. So when they do the evaluation of authorized establishment vis-à-vis bodies in post, those bodies are no longer in post but they are reflecting as they are in post.
“Meanwhile the hospitals knows these people have japaed, they are not available… they are still kept. That is something that perhaps at the level of…Ministry of Health that makes policy to determine how we deal with these things. Health workers can’t simply go off on leave of absence and have his job or her job guaranteed there waiting, meanwhile there is nobody to serve the people because there is no vacancy there, they cannot replace.
“If we do not deal with this, even when you come to implementing this one-on-one replacement, would such people be deemed as replaceable? People who have left. And if they are replaced and tomorrow the person returns, what then happens?”
The Chairman, Salaries and Wages Commission, Mr. Ekpo Nta, said some of the financial agreements reached with the striking doctors were not honoured because of the exchange rate crisis in the country.
President of NARD, Dr. Emeka Orji, while speaking at the meeting, enumerated the the issues that led to the current strike to include the non payment of examination and training allowances, loss of manpower, downgrading of NARD members by the National Medical Post Graduate College, non-payment of skipping arrears, arrears of minimum wage, upward review and consolidation of salary structure among others.
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