PHOTO NEWS: OAUTH Workers Protest Non-Payment Of Salaries, Sack Of Staff

Scores of workers of the Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital (OAUTH) staged a protest on Thursday morning over unpaid salaries which they said has lasted for almost a year.

The workers blocked all the entrance gates of the OAUTH around 7am and avoided entry and coming out of the hospital by anyone.

The employees, who spoke with OSUN DEFENDER in different interviews during the protest, lamented that they had resorted to begging to feed their families due to the hardship the non-payment of salaries subjected them to.

One of the protesting workers who identified himself simply as Seun decried that he had become incapable of feeding his family because of the non-payment of his salary since he joined the service of the OAUTH on December 13, 2022.

Our correspondent reports that security men are presently at the OAUTH to restore normalcy.

Osun Defender recalls that the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Pate, in a statement posted on the X handle of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, explained reasons for the delayed action on the matter, saying the ministry is working out the possibilities of addressing the issue.

The ministry had in November 2023 confirmed the indictment of some officials of the teaching hospital including a former Acting Chief Medical Director, Prof Afolabi Owojuyigbe, for allegedly engaging in job racketeering.

The ministry said an investigative panel led by Aderemi Azeez found that Owojuyigbe carried out over-employment in the hospital, without provision in the personnel budget.

The panel disclosed that Owojuyigbe, a Consultant anaesthetist, employed over 1,973 staff against the waiver of 450 vacancies granted to the hospital by the federal government in the 2022 employment process.

Owojuyigbe and his accomplices are therefore culpable of job racketeering, according to the panel.

As a result of the development, many of the employed workers have not received their salaries for about a year since their employment. The government is, however, insisting that the employment is illegal and that the it has no money to pay the “illegal employees.”

In the statement, Pate alleged that many of the job seekers and their sponsors influence “peddlers and made illegal transactions to secure the illegal positions.”

He clarified that “the issue is primarily an OAUTH mismanagement of employment, with collusion between a few civil actors in the institution, some corrupt individuals and many desperate job seekers.”

He said OAUTH was reportedly approved to recruit 450 health workers but “unfortunately, almost 2000 additional employment /job offers were granted above the number.”

Owojuyigbe was appointed the Acting CMD of the teaching hospital in March 2022, after the then substantive CMD, Prof Victor Adetiloye, a professor, completed his term.

Aside Owojuyigbe and Tajudeen, who were suspended in July 2023, the hospital’s Director of Establishment, Lekan Ganiyu, was also suspended.

Here are photos from the protest: