The Governor of Anambra State, Chief Willie Obiano, has allegedly threatened to sack all the doctors participating in the strike embarked on by doctors at the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital (COOUTH).

Doctors working in the state-owned hospital embarked on a warning strike recently over issue of lack of increase to their take home monthly pay but advanced to a full blown strike when a meeting with the governor failed to meet their demand.

According to the doctors, their monthly salary was nothing to write home about adding that their counterparts in other states earn better than them hence, they demanded for a minimum wage.

While the State Government was pursuing a lasting solution through an enduring condition of service that would soon be passed into law by the House of Assembly, the doctors turned down the offer of salary increase for them in the interim and insisted on continuing with the indefinite strike action.

The governor’s threat followed the disruption of medical examinations, which was billed to start yesterday in all the departments in the hospital because many of the consultants, who are also lecturers in the faculty of medicine, abandoned their students.

A source close to the corridors of power in the state who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Governor was not happy that the consultants numbering about 57 joined resident doctors in the strike, a development that had grounded all services in the hospital.

The source said that the governor had reminded the striking doctors that they have no existing conditions of service, noting that the demand they were making from the state government was therefore out of place as the state government had only begun to work out conditions of service for workers of the hospital in line with existing conditions in other teaching hospitals in the country.

He said: “From what is happening, it would appear that the doctors’ strike was being fueled from outside by politicians because despite the governor’s promise that he was working out improved conditions of service for the doctors, they have remained adamant.

“Their action may force the governor to sack all of them and recruit new ones who would then enjoy the conditions of service that is in the making.”

But the president of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors in the hospital, Dr. Obinna Aniagboso on his part said the doctors were not happy that the governor was tying their conditions of service to improved IGR and insisted on full payment of their salary to bring them at par with resident doctors in other teaching hospitals.

He insisted that the implementation of the new conditions of service should commence from April 2019, warning that they would no longer continue to receive 50% of their salary because most of the doctors were languishing in penury with no progress for those in residency training.

He said although recourse to industrial action had never been the association’s intention, “unfortunately, we have been pushed to the wall for a long time and bruised and efforts to get redress have proved abortive.”

Update news