COVID-19: Trouble Looms As Jos Teaching Hospital Sacks 25 Doctors

Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, the Management of the University Teaching Hospital, Jos (JUTH) has relieved twenty-five medical doctors from its workforce to go home.

Naija News understands that the retrenchment exercise was so sudden and came at a vital timing that the need of medical doctor was paramount

however, speaking on the retrenchment exercise ,President of the National Association of Resident Doctors, JUTH branch, Dr Stephen Lukden who confirmed the development on Wednesday said twenty-five of his members received their letters of terminations without any cogent reason to back up the management decision.

Lukden ” Yes it is true. Twenty-five Residents received letters of termination of their residency training and we have information that some will receive theirs in the weeks/months to come. We have not seen this kind of thing before”

In a letter addressed to the JUTH CMD, Prof. Edmund Banwat, the association asked the hospital’s management to reverse the sack letters issued to its members describing the action as unjust and illegal.

The letter jointly signed by ARD President, Dr Stephen Lukden and the General Secretary, Dr Noel Nnaegbuna noted that the Medical Residency Training Act (MRTA) 2017 which was signed into law by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and gazetted on the 16th July 2018 stipulates guidelines on the conduct of residency training programme in the country.

They pointed out that the Federal Ministry of Health had also in a letter dated 18th June, 2019 directed all Chief Medical Directors in the Federal Tertiary Health Institutions to immediately begin the implementation of the gazetted MRTA acts and wondered why the JUTH management would go-ahead to sack the affected doctors in breach of the constitution.