From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Medical Doctors in Abia State, protesting 24-month salary arrears owed medical and non-medical staff of Abia State University Teaching Hospital Aba (ABSUTH), have barricaded the entrance to Abia Government House, Umuahia.
The doctors who came out in their numbers said they were also protesting 13 months of arrears owed doctors and other staff of the Health Management Board.
The doctors who came from different parts of the state gathered at the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia from where they matched to the Government House Gate.
They chanted solidarity songs even as the doctors carried placards with different inscriptions such as: “Doctors’ lives matter”; “Our salary is our entitlement”; “2 years without salary ‘no be jokes'”; “Man’s inhumanity to man”, and others.
State Chairman of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr Isaiah Abali, who led the procession, said doctors in the employ of the State Government were passing through hell following many months of unpaid wages.
He bemoaned the condition of the doctors many of whom he said, “no longer meet their daily needs”.
Dr Abali expressed sadness over the government’s inability to clear the backlog of salary arrears of doctors.
He said that the protest had no political undertones, and asked Government to stop giving excuses and clear the outstanding arrears.
The NMA state Secretary, Dr Daniel Ekeleme, had earlier reeled out the bitter experiences of some doctors in the hands of their landlord following their inability to renew their house rents.
“Landlords no longer accept Abia doctors because we can’t pay house rents anymore. Some of us can no longer pay our children ‘s school fees. Feeding has become a big challenge now, all because Abia State Government has refused to pay us.
“Abia doctors are the least paid in the country. Out of the 36 states, Abia is the only state where doctors are owed for years.
“We have begged, we have made appeals but they fell on deaf ears; now we are here so the world can hear us. Doctors are dying in Abia. Next time we will come with the bodies of some of our members who have died as a result of hardship”, he said.
A Consultant Hematologist at ABSUTH, Dr Chika Uche, said it was unfair for Government which “receives allocation every month” to pay political office holders with jumbo allowances but owe workers who earn peanuts.
She described the nonchalant attitude of the government to the plight of doctors as cruelty and the height of insensitivity.
Although no government official came to address the protesting doctors, however, a detachment of armed policemen was on the ground perhaps to ensure peace.