After several months of working without pay, some staff of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex (OAUTHC) have been sacked.

Photos obtained by FIJ showed the workers holding placards with inscriptions on the hospital’s premises on Thursday: “Pay us our salary OAUTHC,” “Our demand is clear. Pay our 14 months salary,” “Our 14 month salary or nothing else,” “Say no to injustice,” and “We own this country together.”

A source, who does not want to be named, told FIJ that the management had instructed certain workers to desist from labelling themselves as hospital staff via a memo issued on Wednesday.

READ ALSO: Begging, Suicide Thoughts… How Doctors at OAU Teaching Hospital Manage to Work Without Pay

FIJ earlier reported how workers at the hospital were owed several months’ pay after management, led by Olumuyiwa Owojuyigbe, a former CMD of the hospital, exceeded the approved waiver for its recruitment exercise between 2022 and 2023.

The federal ministry of health had granted the OAUTHC approval to recruit 450 health workers into various cadres. Instead, the hospital employed 2,423 staff, an action that prevented these workers from being captured on the federal government’s payment platform that would have made them eligible for salaries.

Months after the recruitment exercise, the Ministry of Health probed the process and found that job racketeering had taken place under the immediate past chief medical director, among other irregularities.

READ ALSO: INSIDER: Some OAUTHC Workers Receiving Salaries Through the Backdoor While Others Work Without Pay

In compliance with the Ministry of Health’s approved waiver, the hospital issued a memo signed by O. O. Omonije, its acting director of administration, on Wednesday, announcing the 21 categories of staff that “would be considered for rigorous suitability test for employment”.

The categories of staff listed in the memo were hospital consultants, registrars, medical officers, pharmacists, nursing officers, radiographers, medical laboratory scientists, physiotherapists, dietician dental technologists, medical laboratory technologists/technicians, assistant technical officers (electrical and biomedical), health attendants, administrative officers, accountants, health records officers, health records technologist/technicians, assistant catering officers, programme/system analysts, motor drivers/mechanics, and assistant craftsmen.”

Meanwhile, a part of the memo sighted by FIJ stated that there was no money in the hospital to pay the affected workers. It also warned workers not mentioned in the 21 categories above to “cease from conducting or parading themselves as staff of OAUTHC henceforth”.

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‘WHY WE ARE PROTESTING’

FIJ’s source at the hospital said that the affected workers are not protesting the hospital’s decision to terminate their appointments but rather their silence on their unpaid salaries.

He maintained that the protest was because workers were laid off without receiving their salaries despite rendering their services to OAUTHC.

“We can’t work for months without getting paid. They laid people off without talking about payment. We don’t even know whether they are going to pay us or not. If they had paid, the protest may not have happened,” the source told FIJ.

The source further noted that “even if it (the protest) happened, there would be a basis for the government to question the rationale behind the protest if they had paid us. The protest is majorly on payment, not that anybody is contesting the fact that there is a 450 waiver. Nobody is contesting that.”

In December, FIJ reported how one of the unpaid OAUTHC workers – a doctor – contemplated suicide over severe economic hardship and resorted to begging.

“This is not like I haven’t thought about suicide,” the doctor said. “You’re depressed. You wake up and don’t feel like waking up from your bed and going to work. But you still go to work regardless, and someone is telling you, ‘Don’t worry. They’re saving the money for you.’ Are you kidding me? That’s an insensitive remark. Sometimes, they tell you that you don’t even look like you have not got a salary.”