Crisis rocks Gbagada Cardiac and Renal Centre

… As staff protest to demand 6 months salaries

The clinical and non-clinical staff of the Cardiac and Renal Centre located in the Gbagada General Hospital on Monday staged a peaceful protest to demand for the payment of their 6 months outstanding salaries.

With the inscription on their placards reading: “6 months and were still counting,” “No salaries, no work,” “Pay us our money;” the staff comprising of doctors, nurses, pharmacist, radiographer, laboratory scientist, dialysis technicians, account staffs, human resources and administration and  youth corps members said they being owed since September 2015.

The Secretary of the staff, Lekan Oluwole, said they have embarked on an industrial strike action since Thursday,  March 17, 2016 to press home their demands.

“We have appealed to the management of the centre to pay us because we have bills to pay, yet they want to make us redundant.

“The management recently called a meeting to inform them that they intend to have a promo where all medical procedures will be discounted by 40 per cent so that they will be able to pay us. Since the commencement of the promo. We can’t wait for the promo. It’s until our salaries are paid before we resume work.”

Oluwole said, the Management are also discriminatory, “they’ve paid some professional mostly expatriates who are been housed and feed by the management and neglect all other staff, as at today, the expatriate are only owned one month salary.

“Since we shut down, the management went ahead to employ locum staff. The doctors and nurses at the General Hospital are brought to the centre to attend to the patients while they leave their patients at the hospital, they are government employees and this place is privately owned. The locum doctors are being paid not less than N9000 daily. So why have they refused to pay us?”

Responding, the Chief Executive Officer of the centre, Professor Babatunde Green said, the striking staff are right about a lot of things said.

“It is the right of every citizen to protest when they are not happy. I joined the centre in October 1, 2015 but I’m trying all I can to address the situation so they all get paid.”

He said the centre is not having the promo because of the strike.

“During the World Kidney Day 2016 held organised by the Kidney Foundation for Africa in Lagos, I was the chairman and was touched by many who came for the programme, so I thought of what we could do here. I’d believe healthcare should be made affordable and one of the ways to do that is to lower the price.  It just happened that it’s the week we are starting the promo that the strike started. Though, it didn’t have to come to this but unfortunately it did.  The only way we can generate fund is to continue to serve our patients.”

On employment of locum staff, Green said, “We hire staff as we need them and not all the staff we have here have the skills we need so we hire staff but they are not employees. I wrote a letter to them last week, stating all I’ve just told you.”

However, Oluwole said, “From his statement, it shows there’s no definitely time we will be paid. He couldn’t answer the question of expatriates that are being paid neither could he answer the question of marginalisation happening at the centre. How do you expect people to attend to patients without salaries?

“Lately, Halogen Security withdrew their services because they couldn’t pay their 7 months outstanding salaries.”

It was learnt that, several visit of the committee of Private-Public Partnership (PPP), House of Assembly and Ministry of Health were shrouded as the management didn’t give them the true picture of the problems of the centre.

Oluwole said, “The center does not have an in-house an aesthetician, cardiologist and nephrologist and most times, diagnosis are not done because there are no in-house radiologist. It took the intervention of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja and the CEO to arrange for locum radiologist for the centre to be able to perform diagnostics services.

“Several of our in-patient complain of medical care received as most of them are seen by medical officer and it usually take endless waiting before a consultant will come in to see such patient even with the cut-throating fee paid by the patient.”

He implored the state governor, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, office of the PPP and other responsible agencies “as a matter of urgency intervene in the crisis going on in the centre so that the goal of establishing a centre of this nomenclature will not be truncated by the inefficiency and managerial ineptitude of the concessionaire.”