The Chief Medical Director, Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH), Dr. Shedrack Offiah, has said the management has sacked six doctors for abandoning duty after collecting salary.

He spoke on Thursday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) while listing the steps taken to deter ABSUTH doctors who use government time to work in their private hospitals.

Offiah said he sacked the doctors to discourage absentee workers who do not work but collect salary, adding that such are ghost workers and should be treated as such.

He said that some doctors, who had left the institution, still come to the school to collect salary, noting that he would not allow such to happen again.”It is not just punishment. I have sacked six of them.

You will not hear it because I don’t make noise.
”In June, I paid them three months that they did not work for and I am taking record.”Anybody that refuses to come to work from August will not be paid. We will only pay salaries to people who are coming to work.”If we look at you and find out that you are among the people that just put your name here and you are somewhere, we will sack you,’’ Offiah said.

The Chairman, National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), ABSUTH chapter, Dr. Nnamdi Erondu, said the body was only interested in finding solution to the quagmire ABSUTH had found itself and not fighting the management.

He said the workers, who were owed, deserved to be paid and urged the government to seek ways of ending the institution’s crises.

Erondu said one of the ways to end the strike was to pay the salaries of workers to a reasonable extent and fund the upgrade of the institution’s equipment and service-delivery capacity.

He urged the government and ABSUTH’s management to consult NARD members to show them development models of teaching hospitals in other states, which improved their functionality.

He regretted that Abia government’s inability to provide money for the institution’s accreditation was opening it up for a shutdown by supervisory bodies.

NARD recently said it would shut down ABSUTH because of Abia government’s inability to pay its workers, which kept them on strike almost all-year-round.

Erondu said the institution’s accreditation lapsed over six months ago and that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu’s promise to give them N80 million for the accreditation processes had not been fulfilled.

He said the unfulfilled promise also contributed to the dire situation of the school, which was suffering myriads of challenges that had been affecting the workers and students.

Erondu said the government did not give any concrete plans on how and when it would begin payment of the 11-month salary arrears, which Ikpeazu admitted he owed.”

The governor promised to look into the Medical Residency Training Programme and finance the programme.

”He further promised to release N80 million for the accreditation of the departments in the medical school, but to date, he has not honoured any of those his promises,’’ he said.