Resident doctors at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, JUTH, yesterday embarked on a three-day warning strike over what they called arbitrary deductions from their salaries and indiscriminate sack of resident doctors by the management led by Professor Edmund Bele Banwat.
The fresh strike by the doctors obviously has worsened the situation at the health institution as members of Joint Health Workers Sector Union, JOHESU, who had earlier embarked on a similar strike over issues relating to their welfare about six weeks ago are yet to return to work.
The doctors, under the auspices of the Association of Resident Doctors, ARD, marched through the streets carrying placards with different inscriptions to register their grievances. Some of the inscriptions read: “Stop arbitrary tax deductions from our members,” “Upgrade our DTA,” “Pay our training allowances,” “Governor Lalong, come to our aid” and more.
They later converged at the hospital gate where their president, Dr. Cephas Ibrahim, told journalists that his members in the health institution were facing injustice and inhuman treatment from the management, adding that their efforts to address the issues had been met with frustration. “My doctors would just wake up and discover that their salaries were massively deducted without prior notice. Several of our members have also been sacked for no justifiable reasons. Besides, our training allowances have been withheld for two years despite the fact that we have been working. We cannot continue like this. “When we met with the management, they told us that it was tax.
We are not averse to paying tax, but the way it is done suggests something sinister. If not, how is it that this tax is done arbitrarily, such that a lower person has higher tax even more than his senior? Why are people on the same level getting different rates of tax? This is not tax.
We know tax is a system. We are law abiding citizens, we have been paying our tax; all we are saying is that the management should give this tax a universal applicability and human face.” When contacted, chief medical director of JUTH, Prof. Banwa, denied any involvement in the tax controversy, stating that the grievances of the doctors should not be directed at the management but the Board of Internal Revenue Service which is responsible for taxation.
According to him, the institution only applied the computation given by Plateau State Board of Internal Revenue Service to arrive at the deductions from the doctors’ salaries. The CMD also denied sacking any doctors and insisted that only those who had overstayed the mandatory six years period for their programme had to be relieved to enable others benefit.
By: James Abraham
National Mirror News
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