After 30 months of unpaid salaries, 556 contract workers – cleaners, gardeners and security personnel – at Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital (OAUTH) are facing perilous times, reports Associate Editor ADEKUNLE YUSUF
It was with indescribable pride and joy that Awe Iyiola joined the workforce of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital (OAUTH) as a security officer on April 4, 2007. Like many others employed on contract basis at the time, his heart is now laced with regrets over untold hardships he is subjected to as a result of 30-months of unpaid salaries. “We are confused now. Since they started owing us, to eat is extremely difficult. I am a father that cannot pay house rent for over two years. I keep begging my landlord who has humiliated me many times for my inability to pay. I cannot fend for my children or take care of my family. I am regretting everything now,” he told The Nation.
But Iyiola is not alone in this sorry turn of events. Mrs. Funke Akingbade, a widow who said she opted to take up the job to make ends meet after the demise of her husband, is also rueing the day she joined the services of OAUTH. Like Iyiola, she told The Nation that she has been unable to pay her rent for years, while her four children – two boys and two girls – also have to regularly bear the brunt of her 30-months of unpaid salaries. The widow bared her mind while she was getting ready to go to work, saying she regularly uses her spare time to do bricklayer’s work to get something to feed her family. “I am a widow. I joined the service to be able to take care of myself and my children. I have not been paid for 30-months. What do they want us to eat? My house rent has piled up and I could not do anything. The shame is too much. The suffering is too much. We keep enduring because they assured us that things will get better, but nothing has changed,” Akingbade said.
Some of the 556 contract workers employed in 2007 have suffered a worse fate. A fair-complexioned young man popularly called oyinbo in one of the six affiliates of OAUTH is dead as a result of the crisis. At a time, Funke Owopetu was so seriously sick that many of her colleagues thought she would give up the ghost. She survives the illness (she was admitted in the same hospital where she works) and now back on her duty post where she continues to face an uncertain future. Another woman called Adeosun was similarly sick and treated in the hospital. Frustrated by the situation of things, Adeosun has since quit the system that is unable to pay her salary. There are many others with tales of lamentation as a result of the stoppage of their salaries.
Since May 2017, all the affected workers have been left to suffer hard times, with many of them now homeless (having been evicted by their landlords for inability to afford rent). It was gathered that some of the workers now sleep in vacant wards in the hospital or any other open space. Yet they are unable to quit the job, with some of them saying they fear that OAUTH may use such as an excuse not to bother to pay them. One of the contractors said no fewer than four of the workers had died within the period. A cleaner was said to have lost her 22-year old son, owing to her inability to raise money for test and operation. Others were said to be down with various ailments. One contractor told The Nation that he is indebted up to his bank up to N16 million, having been on a borrowing binge to pay the workers in the hope that all issues would soon be resolved. The sad aspect is that each cleaner is entitled to only N15,000 per month.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Boss Mustapha petitioned
Having lost patience, the workers have since organised themselves into a union. On behalf of the suffering workers, the leadership of the Environmental Health Service Providers Association of Nigeria, EHSPAN, OAUTH chapter, has petitioned Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, asking that the issues be looked into to resolve the matter. Signed by Aderounmu Aderemi and Dipo Eluwole, EHSPAN chairman and secretary respectively, the two separate petitions detailed the workers’ sufferings as a result of over 30 months of unpaid salaries.
While asking Osinbajo to intervene and save the workers from dying, the petition claimed that the unpaid salary totalled N400m. “We, the under-listed are the representatives of both security and cleaning services providers otherwise known as outsourced contractors at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, providing aforementioned services at the various arms of the institution in the last 10 years. We are constrained to inform you of the current indebtedness of the institution amounting to over N400m (four hundred million) in the past 32 months to the various organisations engaged to provide these essential services.
“The effects of the non-payment of this outstanding on our cleaners/service providers and operations cannot be over-emphasised. Information at our disposal indicates that apart from the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex and the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital, other Federal Government-owned health institutions are paying outsourced contractors as and when due. We have collectively resolved to appeal and request that you kindly use your good offices to wade into this matter urgently to prevent the currently deprived, impoverished and agitated workers from taking the law into their own hands. Aside from this, we might have no choice but to cut off our services at this critical time given the non-responsiveness of the relevant authorities whose attention had been drawn at various times with no result,” the petition said.
In another petition addressed to Mustapha, a similar position was taken, as the workers said they are counting on the SGF to save them from imminent death. Speaking to The Nation, Eluwole said 11 cleaners are currently sick, with one cleaner having lost her 22-year-old son in the hospital as a result of the inability to raise money for test and operation. He explained that the workers used to enjoy regular payment until recently. According to him, trouble started in 2014 when there were lapses in the payment for almost a year. Respite, which turned out to be temporary, came in 2015 when the government cleared all the outstanding payments. In 2017, the Federal Ministry of Finance invited at the outsourced contractors in Southwest to a verification exercise at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in Lagos. At the meeting was the management of all the teaching hospitals in Southwest and representatives of Ministries of Finance and Health, EHSPAN secretary said. After the verification, the workers said only one month salary was paid. They have been left to suffer since. Eluwole added that the CMD told them that the issue of non-payment of outsourcing contractors has always been a hot-button topic whenever CMDS hold their meetings in Abuja.
The CMD clears the air
OAUTH Chief Medical Director Prof Victor Adetiloye said plans were afoot to solve the crisis. The issue of non-payment of salary, he said, is a national problem, which is not peculiar to his hospital. He told The Nation that letters had been written to all appropriate quarters to make sure the issues are resolved. “It is a national issue; it is not a hospital problem. And it is receiving the attention of the government. Letters have been written to the government and one cannot pre-empt the government,” he said.
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