| This
murderous bluff at LUTH must stop
By Sun News
Thursday, July 8, 2004
For almost a month now, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital
(LUTH) has been hanging perilously on the brinks of total
collapse, due to the haughty attitude of the Management in
response to a defiant staff association that has vowed to
extract a pound of flesh from a system that is already anaemic.
The junior staff are bent on being paid the 22 percent salary
increase which it alleges management had collected about eleven
months ago and diverted to other uses, while the management
swears to the contrary.
As this drama of accusations and denials lingers on, amidst
gladiatorial flexing of muscles by both parties, hundreds
of the sick and the dying have been pushed out of LUTH, and
doors shut, even against accident victims. Such a murderous
abandon can only be possible in Nigeria where human life has
no meaning, as the citizens, the government and the governed,
have all become souless, mindless and without conscience.
Otherwise, how does one explain the criminal silence of the
Federal Ministry of Health; the arrogance of LUTH management;
and the reckless selfishness of the striking health workers
in an organization that ought to exemplify altruistic self
image.
Why are LUTH workers the only ones known to be on strike over
the non-payment of the 22 per cent increase in salary out
of all the federal teaching hospitals? Is it that the workers
are blatant liars? Or that they are prey to arbitrary manipulations
by the management? Who between the two parties is telling
the truth? And why is the Federal Ministry of Health silent
and apparently unconcerned?
We cannot subscribe to a situation where workers are denied
their hard-earned salaries and wages as and when due. This
stance becomes axiomatic in these days of starvation wages
and galloping inflation. It is criminal for government to
be so indifferent in a situation where less than 38 per cent
of our population are said by the World Health Organisation
(WHO) to have access to modern healthcare and services; while
the country is at the bottom of Human Development Index (HDI)
of developing countries, below those of Togo and Cameroon.
Shutting LUTH will worsen our already abject condition.
We earnestly call on the Federal Government to intervene in
this avoidable dispute at LUTH, since only the living and
the healthy can enjoy its touted "dividends of democracy".
In the interim, government should make a grant for the payment
of these workers and urge them to accept whatever fraction
management can afford to pay them in the meantime.
We are not unaware that the government is shackled by a funding
crisis, such that the health budget is approximately three
per cent of the total National Budget, far below the 18 per
cent recommended by WHO. Government can and should do better
than this in the long run.
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