From John Adeleye, Ado Ekiti
Ekiti State Teaching university Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH) branch of Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), on Thursday, vowed to resist further payment of ‘amputated’ salary, saying that the increased subvention to the Hospital should be enough to pay full salary.
Governor Abiodun Oyebanji had on Monday 5, February announced an increment of government subvention to EKSUTH from N261 million to N411 million, saying that the move was in recognition of the noble role played by the teaching hospital.
The Chairman of MDCAN, Dr Adeniran Atiba who spoke to newsmen in Ado Ekiti, on the upward review of EKSUTH subvention, said that with the increase, the era of paying ‘amputated’ salary was gone.
Explaining what he meant by ‘amputated’ salary, The MDCAN chairman said it means payment of net salary after all deductions which the management fails to remit. “They don’t remit all the deductions to where they were supposed to be remitted to.
“A typical example is a Mortgage Bank loan, as I talk to you, they have actually deducted up to 25 months and they have not remitted it to the bank. Those are the things that amounted to the salary amputation that we talked about.
“Even the cooperative deduction is also there. For me personally half of my salary goes to the cooperative. They are yet to remit up to 11 months.
“In that case, I am being paid half of my salary for the period in question. That is why we said we are being paid an amputated salary. We are appealing to Mr Governor that this increment in subvention will make the management to be paying our salary in full. If they must deduct anything the money deducted will be paid to the right place.
“What we are advising management to do now that they have received increased subvention, they should be paying our salary in full right from last month. They should give us a schedule of payment for the outstanding arrears. We are not saying that they should pay everything at once.
“When we appeal to the management and we are getting some form of resistance, we have to go beyond them. I want to tell you that. The management conveyed a meeting of stakeholders and in that meeting we are being told that the new subvention may still not be enough. But from our own calculation, we are saying that the subvention should be enough.
“We are saying that pay our salary first whatever is left can be left for the running of the hospital. As I have told you, Mr. Governor has done his bit. He has tried to improve our subvention to what we are receiving now. Any attempt not to use that money to pay our salary in full we are going to resist it,” he said.
The MDCAN however lauded Oyebanji for increasing funding to the foremost tertiary medical institution in Ekiti, pledging not to let the governor down.
End.
