From Yakubu Busari, Jos
Plateau State Specialist Hospital is without doubt in a deplorable state. Conditions under which staff work are uninspiring and now there is widespread allegations and maladministration at specialist Hospital Jos.
In every organization, either governmental or non -governmental, the finance department is saddled with the responsibility of preparing and paying of staff salaries and other entitlements as required by law.
Investigation revealed that there is a syndicate the finance department of the hospital and that of the ministry of finance working together to frustrate the efforts and desire of government to transform the hospital into a real health institution in accordance with global best practice.
For one, the staffs of the hospital are paid without pay slip and when they demand for it, they are asked to go the state ministry of finance and apply before the payslips are issued to them. That is when they discover that the pay slips are dotted with deliberate deductions, cuts or omitted allowances and benefits.
Worse, there are cases where promotions are hardly reflected in the pay slip and at times when this is done, the steps are pushed down instead of up to indicate the new positions. It is then many are told, after struggles, that they were not due for promotion in the first place. Some even lose one or two steps for taking the pains.
CMD, Dr Golwa
Salary arrears are also characterized with lots of irregularities. Some of the staff are under paid while some others are overpaid. Some junior staff received higher than the senior staff of the same salary structure, CONHESS, all due to favouritism,
It got so bad that fearing open protest by the affected staff, the ministry quickly moved to act: Those that were overpaid were called back to refund the excess in cash to the ministry of finance while for others the deductions were made directly from source during payments of subsequent salaries.
The hospital is also facing challenges of under staffing, considering the influx of patients that visit the hospital daily and the decomposed bodies that littering the wards every now and then.
To check the ugly situation, the hospital had to engage some nurses on contract but the meagre salaries of N20,000 has dampened their spirit, making it harder for the hospital to achieved the desired impact. Now, the measure to introduce morning and night shift for the nurses is causing some problems because of shortage of staff. With the exception of morning shift for the nurses, the supervision of two nurses per shift is against World Health Organization’s standard of four to five nurses per patients.
This challenge is applicable to every unit of the hospital; some obstetric and gynaecological sub units are run by a nurse and at times with student midwives.
To compound the problem, House officers, medical Lab scientists and pharmacist interns had worked for nine months without pay and when they were paid on August 8, they found that only 60 per cent of their entitlements were available for collection, that is N600,90 instead of N1m . Six of them who could not bear the situation and had to leave four months ago were later summoned by the state ministry of finance to refund the excess money paid into their accounts.
Between April to June this year, a Resident Doctor’s name was included in the pensioner’s list because the racketeers had developed many ways of cheating on the state government.
When our correspondent finally got the Chief Medical Director of the hospital to react to these allegation, she agreed there were challenges but stated that many were overblown.
He is Dr. Philemon Golwa.
Taking on the conditions of the nurses, she said, the engagement of the contract nurses came as a result of the disagreement between the former commissioner for health and the union leaders.
“We all agreed that we will only accommodate volunteer nurses because the law does not allowed us to causalise nurses because they are professionals, so we asked all the nurses who want to volunteer to put in their applications.
“We needed only 35 but surprisingly we got up to one hundred and eighty something, who applied. That is to tell you how saturated the market is. We were able to screened that down and got the number we wanted, some of them latter got other engagements somewhere they left and we kept on replacing them.
“We sat down as management and came out with the payment of twenty thousand for them every month and we have been faithful without defaulting. Anybody who tells you other wise does not know what he or she is saying. The records are here.”
On the issue of some staff being overpaid and nepotism and favouritism ruling the waves at the hospital, the CMD laughed it off.
He said: “ Number one, this hospital does not pay any one anything that has to do with salaries; That is being handled by the state ministry of finance, but there was a problem with interns Pharmacist, Medical Laboratory scientists, House officers and Youth Corp members. After computation of their emoluments and we forwarded it to the finance ministry. Unfortunately, when they put it on automated teller machine the machine paid them salaries which they are not suppose to be paid; they are on allowances. It is only House officers, pharmacists and medical laboratory scientists that suppose to be on specified salary scale that is meant for them. All other categories suppose to be on allowances. The automated teller machine over paid them and we asked them to refund the money.
On why, staff are being paid without pay slips, she said it has to do with the Ministry of Finance
“We don’t pay any intern now because the ministry of finance has taken over that but if anybody wants a slip, there is a provision in the ministry of finance that you apply for it and they will give you. Nobody that I know has ever being denied the pay payslip. We have been liaising with the ministry of finance for the future use because so many people will like to have the payslips for interview at the Embassies for authentication of salary payment. We have never denied anybody payslip but it is not on request. We don’t give because the costs of papers.
The Chief Medical Director also talk about the challenges and the future of the hospital, saying that “without challenges, you will not know whether you are succeeding or not, so I blossom in challenges.
“To be very fair to you, I have a mission and every manager of a hospital should have it. My mission is to transform the hospital and make it acceptable to the common man and the public. We have gone round other countries and see what are obtained there. We received a donation of incubators from Olu and Adebayo foundation. UBA had also donated an isolation ward with 20 bed spaces.
“We have commissioned it but yet to start operating it because of lack of man power and we are waiting the governor to give us the opportunity to employ more staff.
“Like I said, the governor is so passionate about the hospital and we are also looking on how we can go about cardiac surgeries in the future and we are partnering with the Moroccan government to build another ICU that will be attached to the operation room and that will take care of paediatric patients immediately after surgery has taking place there.
“That has been completed and when the rain stops, we will roof it.
She also said the hospital management was right now partnering with Radiology for an CT MRI to be put in this hospital.
