Some medical corps members who served in Abuja have still not been paid by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), months after undergoing their passing out parade.

The aggrieved corps members, whose places of primary assignment (PPA) spread across various general hospitals in the FCT, did their one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) between 2022 and 2023.

Apart from the N33,000 monthly allowance paid by the federal government, the FCTA is supposed to pay medical graduates serving in government hospitals an additional 10-month allowance. But some of the corps members told FIJ that while some were only paid for six months, others did not get a dime.

When corps members are posted to work in private or government institutions in the 36 states of the federation, these organisations often augment the federal government’s allowance with an additional payment. This additional allowance, which is paid for 10 months, varies across cadres for medical corps members. FIJ gathered that while medical doctors get N75,000, medical lab scientists get N39,700, physiologists get N31,000 and optometrists get N55,400.

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

A medical lab scientist, who does not want to be named, told FIJ that he was only paid for six months out of 10. He also revealed that this payment issue was a culture that had been going on for a long time.

“Former batches are affected too, and that is why there is a backlog of outstanding payments,” he said.

“We were posted to the hospital arm of the of the FCTA, which is the Hospital Management Board (HMB). NYSC just posts medical personnel such as doctors, nurses, medical lab scientists and pharmacists to the FCTA without any follow-up on how we are faring.

“They don’t even care if we are being paid as our places of primary assignment (PPA) ought to, despite the rigorous service we render to the hospitals. The painful part is that it’s been happening for a long time. They pay us according to our cadre. They only pay for 10 months rather than the entire year. That’s the norm, and we don’t even have a problem with that; but they don’t even pay regularly.”

READ ALSO: Wesley University Has Not Paid Part-Time Lecturers Since 2022

“We were doing the work of employed health workers and even more. The 10-month allowance was supposed to be paid every three months. For those of us that left camp in November 2022 and started work almost immediately, they were supposed to start paying us from January, but it was delayed.

“We expected the first round of payment in March, but it was not paid until much later. When they paid, we expected the payment for April to June but did not get it immediately either. The last batch of payments, which was to be made between September and November latest, has not been paid till now.

“We are begging them to pay us for the remaining four months, but nothing has been done about it. They have not paid us. We even learned that some batches that passed out before us were not paid for the complete 10 months.”

A medical doctor, who served with Batch C Stream 2 and completed his NYSC in November 2023, told FIJ that he was only paid for six months.

Like the lab scientist’s account, the doctor said medical corps members were supposed to be paid quarterly, but this was not the case.

“I was supposed to get paid in March, but unfortunately, I wasn’t paid until May. There were people from Batch C, Stream 1, who were paid, but those of us in Stream 2 did not get paid.

“We went to FCTA, and they said they sent the money to our banks, that the issue was with our banks. When we went to our banks, they said they did not get any funds from FCTA. It lingered until around the middle of May when we got paid for January to March.

“For the next three months, which were supposed to be April, May and June, we were paid in August. Ideally, the remaining four months was supposed to be paid at the end of October, but we did not get paid.

“That was when some of us started reaching out to the authorities, NYSC, hospitals and FCTA. They were just giving us excuses. Some doctors who were there before my set had not even been paid six months as of the time I started working there.

“At some point, we said we were not going to work any longer because we did not have food to eat. The hospital was a serious mess at the time. Imagine about seven doctors, who were doing the bulk of the work at a hospital, absent from work for a week.

“It got the attention of the hospital, and information got to the Director-General (DG) of the HMB, who requested to see us. Some of us went there, and the DG said they would make an appeal so that they could transfer the payment to HMB because they were not having payment problems.

“Besides, we learned that HMB used to be responsible for paying corps members who were health workers. The DG said he would try to see if it could be transferred back to them. Unfortunately for us, that was not possible for our 2022 batch. He said they could only start with the 2023 corps members. We later learned that corps members posted after our batch were being paid regularly by the HMB.”

The doctor mentioned that now that he had finished serving, he had little hope of getting the remaining four-month allowance.

“If it comes, fine. Nobody is even telling us the exact time we will be paid.”

READ ALSO: LUTH Doctors Employed One Year Ago Have Not Been Paid a Dime — And the Hospital Is Helpless

‘I DID NOT GET A DIME’

FIJ also spoke with a female optometrist deployed with Batch C, Stream 2, who revealed that she did not get a PPA to accept her until April 2023.

The optometrist said her initial PPA did not have an existing eye clinic, and she was rejected because “it was just like a waste of time”.

“I was eventually posted to a general hospital towards the end of April. I asked for accommodation, but they said there was none for optometrists. After my documentation, I assumed work in May and worked till November,” the optometrist told FIJ.

While talking about the unpaid salary, she said, “All through my stay there, FCTA never paid me a dime. I complained about the delay, but nothing was done. I told the HMB about it because initially, they were the one in charge of the payment until it was handed over to FCTA.

“Where I stayed was far from the hospital. I was spending nothing less than N3500 to and fro on transport every day. With the way things are going, there is no hope of getting paid. Maybe the money is just gone like that, but it’s not fair. There’s no need posting people to places and not taking care of them.”

A physiologist, who also did not receive any of the FCT allowance, said he was told to write N31,000 in one of the forms he filled out during his monthly clearance but he never got paid.

He said he expected the NYSC and FCTA to interface with each other to resolve the issue once and for all, but nothing of such happened while he was serving.

“I never got any credit alert. Before I was posted, I heard that I was supposed to be posted to the FCTA, and then a facility under them. But in my own case, NYSC posted me directly to a general hospital. They bypassed FCTA. I believe NYSC is supposed to either liaise with the FCTA or even send a memo with the names of those they are posting to general hospitals. But it seems there was nothing of such.

“When I met with my Local Government Inspector (LGI), he said some people before us had a similar issue and they took their names before we went to camp. Now that it’s our turn, nobody has taken our names to the FCTA. But I believe the two government bodies know what they are doing.

“Even those who were posted from the FCTA were not paid in full. I have some friends who only got six months. It’s like they are doing a selective collation of names for payment.”

‘ONLY SIX MONTHS TOO’

Another medical laboratory scientist, who was deployed with 2022 Batch C Stream 1 and finished his service in October 2023, was also paid for just six months.

“For the duration of the service, I was paid for six months. Of course, it affected many of us. This was a payment we were entitled to get. Imagine you expecting income from two places, FG and FCTA but you only get from the former.

“The truth is that there is no form of communication from the FCTA. Nobody has any substantive information on when or if we would ever be paid.”

READ ALSO: How IPPIS Has Deprived OAUTH Non-Clinical Staff of Salaries Since January

‘STORIES UPON STORIES’

One of the former corps members told FIJ that the NYSC denied knowledge of the issue when it was escalated to the management.

Another corps member also disclosed that attempts to ascertain the cause of the delay proved unsuccessful, with the FCTA providing unclear explanations.

One of them said, “When the issue started, we involved NYSC, and they told us they were not aware. We told our Local Government Inspector (LGI), and she said the state coordinator was working on it and that we would be paid.

“Some of us would have even preferred to serve in private hospitals. They posted us there, and they were saying they were not aware. We held meetings with managing directors of some of the general hospitals we were posted to, and they also said they were not aware that such a thing was going on.

“They told us they did not know FCTA used to delay our salaries. All they have been telling us are stories upon stories. This is December. The money they ought to have paid since September has been delayed.”

BETWEEN FCTA AND NYSC

A top officer in the welfare department of the FCTA, who does not want to be named, told FIJ that the FCTA never owes.

He also said the payment was currently in progress and added that there were procedural steps involved in approving payments.

“FCTA never owes their corps members. If you check well, two-third of the corps members who come to the FCT are absolved by the FCTA. FCTA does not pay every month, but every three months. This is because we cannot saddle the minister with payment issues every day.

“As things stand, the payment is being processed, and the amount is enormous. They should have waited for the money to drop before they start complaining. They should understand that there are processes before disbursement. From the permanent sec, it goes to the minister and back to the permanent secretary. From the permanent secretary, it goes to the director of treasury. From there, it goes to funds. It will still go to audit and then to the Central Payment Office (CPO). And the processes are to ensure that no one is found wanting.

“Anybody that is aggrieved can come to the FCT so that we can identify what is wrong and resolve it. For those who have received part of the payment, their payment is ongoing.”

Regarding corps members who were never paid at any point in time, the officer said the FCTA was not to blame.

According to the officer, the problem started when Suleman Abdul, former FCT coordinator of the NYSC, failed to interface with the FCTA before posting corps members to their respective PPAs.

“The former NYSC coordinator changed the narrative of everything. He went to meet Hajia Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu, the then minister of state for FCT, and told her he wanted to be posting to suburbs of FCT. It is those of us working at FCT who know where corps members are needed. But the man bypassed protocols.

“Instead of going through either the permanent secretary, who is the accounting officer of admin, he went to the minister of state, got approval, got the number of organisations and parastatals under the FCT and started posting there.

“When he posts a corps member directly to Wuse General Hospital, for instance, that means you have not been posted to the FCTA, where you are supposed to do documentation before we would now get your details into our system. We later said ‘since NYSC wants to post them directly, give us their names, let them come for documentation, and then we would arrange their payment’, but NYSC was not doing that. Are we going to pay people we don’t know about? It is not the fault of the FCTA; it’s the fault of NYSC.

“We wrote many times to NYSC that we wanted the status quo to go back, but we haven’t got any response. When FCTA was posting corps members, there were no payment issues. So, it is not our fault.”

NYSC’s FCT secretariat could not be reached for comments, as calls to the phone number found on its website were unanswered.

Also, phone calls and messages to an NYSC local government inspector at the FCT were not responded to.