No less than six health workers under the Abia State Hospital Management Board have died in the last three weeks over their inability to cater for their basic needs owing to the refusal of the state government to pay them their salaries for over 12 months.
This is as health workers under the state government have cried out over the rate at which their colleagues are dying out of frustration, suffering and hunger.
The health workers who protested in Umuahia on Tuesday over the unpaid salaries said that the state government had turned the board into a place of frustration, pain and death.
A health worker who spoke on the conditions of anonymity said they buried three of their members last week while three are in the mortuary.
He added that there is no money to bury them.
“One of us, a young lady, has recently developed a mental problem. She walks about on the street aimlessly.”
The workers staged a protest at the front of their office which was under lock and key, carrying placards with inscriptions such as, “Save our souls in HMB”, “Our children are dying of hunger”, “Pay HMB workers their 12 months’ salary arrears” and “Our landlords are on our necks for house rent” among others.
Echeta Chikezie, the state chairman of the Allied Action Committee, said the government paid the basic salaries for 2019 just last year.
According to him, workers accepted it because of the suffering they were going through.
He noted that the agreement with the state government stated that from 2022, the workers will be paid alongside core ministries as of when due.
“We have decided to be working outside the gate instead of working inside and dying inside,” he said.
Chikezie, who regretted that the workers had been made to protest all the time before they were paid, stated, “This is how we are paid, we must lock up the gate, protest, cry out, plead before payment. Workers deserve their wages, it is our right and not a privilege.”
The state chairman, Medical Health Workers Union of Nigeria, HMB branch, Chidinma Nwokoma, who said health workers were going through hell, stated, “We are treated with so much wickedness and pain.”
She regretted that since the inception of the Ikpeazu-led administration, they had suffered much and must protest before they get one month’s salary.
She added, “Our heart is bleeding that the governor, whose mother is retired as a nurse, a health worker, can hate us this much. We are treated like second-class citizens and our children are being thrown out of school.”
Reacting, a staff of HMB, Nkechi Gabriel, reiterated that an HMB woman in her home could not take care of her family.
Gabriel stated, “I was taken to court recently by my landlord because I could not pay my rent, the judge, whose sister is a staff of HMB and aware of our plight, had mercy on me.”
