MEDICAL TYRANNY: MANAGEMENT OF FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER BIRNIN KEBBI DEDUCTS WORKERS SALARIES ILLEGALLY

Secret Reporters

Following the illegal deduction of their salaries, the health workers of the Federal medical center Birnin Kebbi not able to stomach their grievances has expressed their displeasure towards the management by writing to the Accountant general, Auditor General, Head of Service of the Federal Republic, EFCC, ICPC, Minister of Information and Culture, and even the Presidency.

SecretReporters in its investigation into the dispute between the management and staff discovered that the management of Federal medical center Birnin Kebbi has been engaging in series of illegal deduction of staff salaries without an official directive from the federal government. Digging deep, our reporter discovered that the management after receiving payments for their staff issue them with a different payment voucher for their original salary payment and siphon the balance into private pockets. An evidence of this is contained in the payment slip of staffs especially the staffs that were promoted in 2017.

Further investigations also revealed that the management of Federal Medical Center Birnnin Kebbi reacting to the national strike action embarked on by health workers applied the “NO WORK NO PAY” rule on their staff yet the money deducted from the affected workers was not remitted to the federation accounts as the management failed to show evidence for these when requested. Tentatively, a directive was given to all staff that received skipping allowance to refund the money to their TSA account but the staff we learnt declined to comply on the ground that every staff had been remunerated and also the management lacked such power to demand for that without any officially approved Memo from the federal government.

In line with that, the director when asked to produce an official letter on that, he couldn’t but rather made up a letter directing all the recipients of the relativity and skipping allowance to refund some of the amount to the TSA account number 0340110161013. It is stipulated that over 4million naira have gone into that account with a large chunk unaccounted for.

In a developing story SecretReporters discovered that the management also gave another directive to the account office to effect the deduction from recipients’ salaries for the month of April that refused to refund the said payment. A move which is viewed by many of the affected and aggrieved staff of the Medical Center as a gross misconduct by the director and an infringement on their rights and entitlements.

However the Kebbi state chapter of JOHESU has vowed not to return to work even if the national body gives the directive to do so as long as the management headed by the director refuses to return the siphoned money to the federation account.