Following the suspension of strike embarked upon by the staff of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), the Medical Director, Professor Edmund Banwat has called on all staff of the hospital to join hands with the management in order to address some of the outstanding challenges facing the hospital.

According to him, the lessons learnt from the strike would further spur the management and staff to work together in order to deliver qualitative health care to the generality of the people.

Prof. Banwat who stated this in a press statement issued to journalists in Jos, the Plateau State Capital revealed that a t a meeting recently held in Abuja between the federal ministry of Health and the unions of JUTH, the management of the hospital was absolved of blames in the industrial dispute that plagued the hospital since March, 2016.

According to the statement, it was a common knowledge that while the dispute lasted, staff of the hospital and the general public was subjected to a lot of misinformation on the dispute which only further aggravated the situation.

In the interest of place, stability and reconciliation, the statement added “prior to the dispute, the management shared with unions, two circulars on no work no pay as directed by the Honourable minister of health and the secretary to the Government of the Federation respectively, where as other unions in three other hospitals in Nigeria who were also on strike, had upon the release of these circulars suspended their strike action. The failure of the unions in JUTH to suspend or call-off their strike action inadvertently resulted in the nonpayment of the disputed two months salaries by the federal government.

He further made it clear that staff salaries were not directly paid from JUTH but are rather managed on the IPPIS platform from the office of the Accountant-General in Abuja, adding that it is not management of the hospital that has refused to pay the two months salaries as wrongly perceived.

This among other issues the CMD regrettably in the centre of the controversy which continued to cause so much pain and inconvenience to the hospital patients, visitors as well as the host community.

The management of JUTH therefore thanked the Executive Governor of Plateau State, Rt. Hon. Barr. Simon Lalong, Hon. Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewale, distinguished Senator Joshua Chibi Dariye as well as security agencies in Plateau State for their kind intervention.

It further thanked the host community led by Agwom Izere, Jos North Adagwom Emmanuel Ajik and all friends of the hospital who worked hard to ameliorate the suffering of patients during the impasse adding or we equally thanked the general public the unions and most importantly our patient for their understanding and cooperation”.

Source: http://www.jtownconnect.com/2016/09/juth-staffs-suspends-strike-as-cmd.html

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