The Federal Government through its Minister of State for Health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, said it has paid about ₦20Bn in COVID-19 inducement allowance to doctors and health workers in the country.
Mamora said this on Wednesday morning while speaking on Channels Television’s programme, Sunrise Daily. The Minister applauded all front-line workers in the country amid the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
About 16,000 doctors across the country have knocked the government over its inability to meet their demands, which included insurance package, payment of the outstanding inducement package, payment of medical residency training funding among others.
The doctors had earlier called an upward review of their hazard allowance from the sum of ₦5,000 which they described as “paltry”.
The Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors had said “The Federal Government has not invited us to a meeting after we notified them that we will be proceeding on strike. We have directed all our members across the country both federal and state institutions to recommence the strike we suspended on June 22, 2020”
Speaking on Wednesday during the programme, Mamora said it is regrettable that the kind of situation is happening now when the nation is fighting a pandemic.
He said the ₦5,000 hazard allowance for doctors and health workers in the country, which had been in existence for about 30 years was being suspended for the period of the pandemic.
In his words, “We have been able to pay the COVID-19 inducement allowance because we had to suspend the hazard allowance for this period so that we can go into renegotiation after.
“We are now paying starting from 50 per cent of the basic of the workers depending on where the point of operation is. We were able to pay April, May full, June, part of it has been paid but not fully paid and it’s because of the economic situation and these funds have to be sourced for one way or the other.
“We’ve been able to disburse close to N20bn and, I repeat, close to 20bn. So, to now say nothing has been done, that is not true.”
Mamora also spoke on the insurance package for the health workers who pay the ultimate price on the line of duty, he said, “Every worker in the Federal Civil Service is entitled to the Group Life Insurance Scheme which is domiciled in the office of the head of Civil Service of the Federation.
“We discussed this in our previous engagements with the doctors and we did say that you need to come up with this information and all the relevant officials, particularly in the office of the head of Civil Service of the Federation were present so that they (doctors) will know who to direct all these things too.
“What we just do in the ministry of health is the supervision of the process. So, when a health worker dies and he was an employee of the Federal Government, the information comes to us, goes to our Human Resources Directorate and it is processed. Ours is to do a follow-up but the office of the head of Civil Service will get these things done because they are the ones that interface with insurance companies because it is a group of insurance companies that manage this process.
“But what we have discovered is that some of the time, the appropriate information is not made available. For example, we have asked the various federal tertiary hospitals to come up with their nominal role so we know who is on that list and stands to benefit in the event that death, unfortunately, happens. We made that clear and the doctors said they now understand better.”
Commenting on the medical residency training funding, one of the agitations of the doctors, Mamora said this has been captured in the Revised 2020 budget but the government bureaucracies and processes were delaying its implementation and payment.
He added that “The issue of residency programme gulped N4bn and it has been captured in the budget and it has been appropriated but you know government processes tend to be somehow slow. So, it’s just the implementation in terms of documentation that remains. The doctors themselves can confirm.”
