91 unpaid junior doctors charge at accountant general

Junior doctors who started work 11 months ago (in September 2014) have expressed disgust at the Controller and Accountant General's Department (CAGD) for what they describe as the falsehood being peddled about concerning their unpaid salaries.

All 91 of them have subsequently resolved to present all necessary documents to the accountant general's office coming Monday (27th July) as a means to debunk consistently inconsistent media claims by the CAGD that they haven't presented necessary documents to facilitate payment of their salaries.

According to them, they had exhausted the three-step process required of them to be placed on government payroll, yet the account general's department had decided, for reasons best known to them, to shirk their responsibility of ensuring they are paid.

The doctors channeled their grievance in a strongly worded press release in which they bemoaned the treatment that had been meted out to them despite putting in their best over the last 11 months.

"It's a gloomy effigy of us as a people and an indictment on us as a nation, that we reward the patriotism of 91 doctors who have worked 11 months without salary with hunger, suffering, mental fatigue and depression," their statement said.

Adding that, "slowly we are being sentenced to death and for what crime? We do not know. Please respect our human rights and pay us our due."

Their statement further chided a CEO of a hospital who, like the account general, sought to belittle their plight with the excuse that he (the CEO) suffered same when he was also a junior officer. To that, they said: "what we refuse to do is to act as if this canker is the new normal or to pretend that it's simply sufficient to grieve and, that any mention of us doing something to stop it is somehow politicizing the problem by pursuing a certain agenda.

In fact, we are too hungry to pursue any agenda other than getting our 11 months' salary paid in full to each of us. Accepting the status quo will be an endorsement of mediocrity. Our country must make progress as we refuse to set a standard as low as that displayed in 1990," their statement added.

The doctors demanded that their full salaries be paid to them by whoever was withholding them for whatever reason.