Dear Uncle J.D,
I have been an ardent listener of your radio programme for close to 3years on Classic fm Front Page News every weekday, I must confess that you have made me stayed glued to my radio from tuesdays while I had to stop listening to other similar news analysis programme on other radio stations. I must commend your fearless and unbiased analysis.
Sir, I need your urgent assistance on our delayed payment of 5-months stipends by the Lagos state government. Myself and my colleagues(about 250) graduates and master degree holders were recruited in 2012 during the BRF administration under the supervision of the then S.A to the governor on public health, Dr Mrs Yewande Adeshina as a way of assisting the health workers to focus more on their clinical duties while we take care of the non-clinical aspect especially in the area of medical records.
After our recruitment, we went through a 4-month training on the core areas of our job scope(Customer care, triaging, medical records and pharmacy) @ PSSDC, Magodo. On successful completion of the training(both theoretical & practical) we were then posted to the Flagship Primary Health Centres under the 20-LGAs in Lagos state, later on some of us were posted to other non-flagship PHCs due to the shortage of health workers to assist in the non-clinical areas. We were recruited as “HEALTH VOLUNTEERS” in July, 2012 under a scheme known as Lagos State Health Volunteers Scheme. We were given two polo uniform and an I.D card and governor Fashola inaugurated the scheme in 2012 @ Alausa, we were told that its a contract work for 2-years in which the government didn’t promise permanent staffing @ the end of the 2-years. We were told that we would be paid #40,000 every month. Between Jan-May 2015 our stipends was also delayed, we had to pay the governor an SOS visit during his last 100 days in office celebration @ Ltv 8 blue roof before payment was now made at the inception of governor Ambode’s tenure.
Since the beginning of 2016, we have not received a dime from the state government as monthly stipends and we have been going to work all this while and also have been living on borrowings from parents, friends and neighbours. Most of us are married men with kids in the school. The agency managing us after the expiration of the BRF regime(Lagos state primary health care board, Yaba) have been collecting monthly reports from us since the beginning of 2016 till date and yet they claim governor Ambode hasn’t signed our cheque or atimes they claim he has signed but bureacratic bottlenecks in government has been the cause of the delay.
In an effort to address the ugly situation, a meeting was called by the new S.A to governor Ambode, Dr Femi Onanuga, and the P.S ministry of health with selected health volunteers representative in May, 2016. Both of them claimed that we were not handed over to them by the past administration and that they can’t find any document laying claim to our recruitment in 2012. We were surprised to hear this because we have been submitting monthly reports @ Yaba and have been getting our pay till december, 2015.
We planned on staging a peaceful protest that was why the meeting was called and we were promised that we will get paid in 2-weeks or thereabout and they also pleaded that we shouldn’t stage any protest for now that the governor won’t be happy with it and that solution was around the corner. Lagos state pays it permanent staff before 25th of every month and here we are working for the same government and we’re not being paid or given due recognition.
All that we want from Governor Ambode is to pay our Jan-May 2016 outstanding stipends and also confirm our appointment, because work has been on our conversion before now and we don’t know why it was stalled.
Myself and my colleagues hope in you to assist us in your personal capacity to investigate this issue and also plead on our behalf to the powers that be in Lagos state.
WE ARE DYING SILENTLY!!!
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