2023 employed health workers languish in penury as FCTA refuses to pay them

By Moses Okorie

The health workers who were employed in 2023 under the Hospitals Management Board of the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, have continued to languish in penury despite the promises made by the FCT Permanent Secretary on Health and Environment on 29th May 2024 that their matter was being looked  into.

According to some of the staff who spoke with Nigerian Pilot in Abuja, life has become unbearable as we are still living as those who have not gotten any employment, because their family members are already depending on them like their other colleagues who are being paid regularly.

One of them who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “We have been employed by FCTA since May 2023 including doctors, pharmacist,  Medical laboratory scientists, nurses and others of which we have different dates of assumption of duty.

“We were told in FCTA when someone is employed, it takes at most three months before his information would be processed and they would start paying him salaries, but unfortunately, it is not so in our own case”.

Another affected health worker said, “Majority of us worked for six months straight without getting paid, not even the first 28 days working allowance that we are entitled to. They did not care how we pulled it through to come to work on a daily basis. As a matter of truth , some of us are buried deeply in debt and still unable to repay and this is constituting so much embarrassment to us and our families, all they are after is for us to keep coming to work with compromised mental health and hungry stomachs.

“We  are being owed salaries for periods ranging between  three and six months  as the case may be. We have tried to remind the people responsible and our various associations, but nothing has been done about it”, she said.