The Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), DELSUTH chapter has appealed to the Delta State Governor, Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa to save the Delta State University Teaching Hospital,
Oghara from its comatose condition, just as the body rejected the planned imposition of a foreign medical consultant as the substantive Chief Medical Director of the hospital.
DELSUTH MDCAN made this resolution in a statement signed by the Association Chairman, Dr. Y.O. Obiabo and made available to newsmen, arising from an emergency meeting held on the 17th August 2016, to deliberate on issues concerning the general decay of the apex state hospital and the need to put an end to the situation of neo-colonization, apartheid and impunity against her members as well as halting the wasteful government spending on Diaspora personnel project of questionable value made the following observation and resolutions:
That Since inception of the Delta State University Teaching Hospital there has been a dichotomy amongst the staff made up of two major categories, the Diaspora staff (including the Diaspora consultants) on contract and the non-Diaspora staff (including the honorary and hospital consultants).
Pointing out that, Diaspora staffers who offers next to nothing in the hospital are highly paid, quartered and catered for with free utility charges and vehicles, the non-Diaspora staff (honorary and hospital consultants especially) are poorly paid using the state scheme of service and are not quartered, catered or given utility vehicles despite leaving in faraway towns of Sapele, Benin and Warri due to security challenges.
They stressed further that the three previous Chief Medical Directors of the Teaching hospital since inception have been chosen from among the Diaspora consultants who are fewer than 20% of the Consultant population. Under the watch of these past three CMDs the hospital has degenerated to her present sorry state.
That since the experiment of appointing the Diaspora personnel as Chief Medical Directors has failed on three consecutive occasions; the Governor should, as a mark of fairness kindly respect the result of the last election for the appointment of the next substantive Chief Medical Director for DELSUTH.
Appealing to His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Delta State, Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa to kindly uphold the results of the election conducted at the instance of the Board of the institution.
Pointing out that other Teaching hospitals in the country appoint Nigerian trained consultants, sometimes their own products as CMDs and they are doing excellently well, they wondered why DELSUTH case should be different by continuing this wasteful experimentation.
How long are they going to be told that they qualify to work in a place but they do not qualify to head it? Whereas their contemporaries head even better and bigger Teaching hospitals; stating that they can no longer be slaves in their own land.
The Association lamenting the huge amount of funds the foreign consultants are being paid averred that the State government should without delay terminate their appointments and channel the huge resources invested on them to revive the hospital that is currently begging for survival.
According to the statement, 17 foreign medical personnel (1 Nigeria -based consultant, 1 Nigeria-based medical officer and 3 foreign-based consultants and 12 others made up of non-clinical personnel, nurses laboratory scientist and a pharmacist) are being paid about N50,000,000, whereas 38 Nigerian trained honorary consultants are being paid about N18,000,000 in the hospital.
They also stated that if government has “sufficient funds” to sustain the policy of recruiting foreign medical personnel at such huge costs in the hospital, then all staff of the hospital should be placed on that same payment platform.
