From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, on Monday appealed to the Oyo State Government to implement adopted benefits in Federal Tertiary Health Institutions (FTHIs) to reduce what they described as varnishing workforce.
President of the association, Dr Sope Orugun, and General Secretary, Dr Stanley Nnara, made the appeal to the state governor, Seyi Makinde, in a statement they issued and jointly signed by them.
According to them, quick implementation of the benefits and others would mitigate further migration of healthcare workers out of the state hospitals to health facilities owned by the Federal Government based on the disparity between both institutions in terms of benefits and conditions of service.
The ARD recalled that the association had in August 2022 when Governor Makinde visited the LAUTECH Teaching Hospital advocated the domestication of the Medical Residency Training Act (MRTA) and implementation of the Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF) in the state.
Some of the issues addressed during Makinde’s visit on August 15, 2020, was the domestication of MRTA which caters for the regulation and funding of residency training programmes in Nigeria, adding that the MRTA is an Act of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, guiding medical residency training programme in Nigeria, which guarantees resident doctors yearly funds for training and retraining.
According to the statement, the act, which was signed into law in 2017, is been well implemented at the federal level, adding that an upward review of the amount for MRTF has been ongoing at the federal level.
The ARD many states in Nigeria, including Oyo State, have not adopted or effected the MRTA/MRTF, saying: “As a responsible association, we have engaged all organs of this current administration in a bid to right this wrong. However, this has proven difficult in the last year, as we were only, just recently, able to hand over the Oyo State draft of the Bill for MRTA to the governor personally.
The bill, according to the statement, was handed over to Governor Makinde on December 1, during his Ogbomoso Town Hall meeting.
“A quick implementation of these benefits in Oyo State as adopted at the FTHIs and some states will reduce this disparity and mitigate further emigration of healthcare workers, particularly doctors, out of our dear state,” it said.
The association also made a case for an upward review of the hazard allowance in the state and subvention if the health facility would compete for the services of the fast-reducing professionals in the national labour market.