FCT doctors hail FG for paying arrears, appeals for budget review

By Ummul Idris
The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter, have commended the Minister of FCT, Muhammad Bello, for paying the backlog of doctors’ salary arrears.
Briefing newsmen in Abuja on Saturday, Dr Roland Aigbovo, the President of the association, said that the action of the minister was commendable as he had kept to his promise.
Aigbovo however used the opportunity to appeal to the minister to also remember the stagnation of doctors who have long been due for promotion but were yet to be promoted.
He stressed that some doctors have been stagnated for over three years, while others due for promotion have remained on the same level for two years.
He added that some of the promotions that had been done were done wrongly as some of the doctors were promoted to the same level that they were.
Aigbovo explained that some doctors were wrongly placed and the wrong placement was corrected and they were skipped and placed on the next level, only to now also be promoted to the same level that they were skipped to.
“They were promoted to the same grade level they were skipped to.
“For example, a doctor on grade level 12 was skipped to grade level 13 by correction of the error and was then again promoted to grade level 13.
“The arrears paid were for skipping, which is the correction of the wrong placement,” he noted.
On funding for public hospitals, the ARD president appealed to the minister to budget for each hospital according to their needs and to separate the budgets of each individual hospital.
“We also appeal to the minister to make provision of each hospital to have their budget and not a blanket budget because every hospital has different running cost,” he said.
He appealed for more training for resident and non-resident doctors as well as for other departments in the hospitals.
“Presently, only four departments are involved in residency training which includes family medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, surgery and ophthalmology.
“We want more departments including internal medicine, paediatric, radiology and psychiatry to enjoy similar training,” he urged. (NAN)