14th August, 2017
Cleaners, gardeners and other outsourced staff of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), have embarked on an indefinite strike over the non-payment of salaries for 11 months.
The strike took effect from Friday, Aug. 11.
Their leader, Mrs Esther Rwang, said that they were last paid in August 2016.
She said that their employers were contractors to JUTH.
“We were last paid in August 2016; our employers keep telling us to be patient. They keep telling us that we will soon be paid. But we are tired of fake promises,” she said.
She said that most of the workers were widows with families to cater for.
“Since the ordeal of the non-payment of salaries started, our children have been thrown out of school.
“Many others have also been thrown out of rented apartments,” she said.
One of the cleaners, Mrs Grace Pam, told NAN that she had become a perpetual debtor because salaries were not forthcoming.
“I have borrowed without paying back; that has cost me most of my friends who currently see me as a liar,” she said.
She advised JUTH’s management to pay off the workers if they no longer needed their services.
Relatives of patients on admission now clean the spaces occupied by their relatives.
Prof. Edmund Banwat, JUTH’s Chief Medical Director, however, told NAN that the non-payment of the outsourced staff was not peculiar to JUTH.
“Many other tertiary hospitals have even disengaged them long ago,” he said.
He added, however, that he was not aware of the current protest by the outsourced workers.
“No one has formally communicated that to me,” he said.