LAUTECH unions petition assembly over plan to sack workers

Members of staff of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital, Osogbo have written a petition to the Osun State House of Assembly asking the legislators to prevail on Governor Rauf Aregbesola against the alleged plan to sack  over 1,000 workers in the hospital.

The workers under the aegis of the Joint Health Sector Unions said this in a petition written by its chairman, A Afolabi and secretary, V.Y. Ayano. A copy of the petition addressed to the Speaker of the House of Assembly was made available to our correspondent in Osogbo on Friday.

The JOHESU leadership said the directive to carry out mass retrenchment of workers in the hospital was contained on pages 9 and 10 of the government  gazette No 1, Vol. 26 of 12th January, 2016.

The union asked the lawmakers to carry out an independent investigation on the matter to ascertain the true position of things.

The petition read, “The above named union  wishes  to bring to your attention the executive order of Mr. Governor to implement mass retrenchment of over one thousand  workers in LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, Osogbo.

“You  will recall that  forensic auditors  were employed to carry out auditing exercise in the institution. The report of the audit even though gave favourable recommendations to Mr. Governor, however none of the recommendations was  honoured. Mr. Governor gave contrary instructions that workers should be sacked.

“We hereby appeal that the the honourable lawmakers  will investigate the matter for your possible intervention as a matter of urgent importance while we expect that the entire House will prevail on Mr. Governor not to implement his decision to sack.”

Some of the reasons for the planned  sacking listed in the gazette include over-staffing, over-recruitment, unlawful upgrading  of staff, and overstay of residency programme by the resident doctors.

This was said to have increased the wage bill and the  state government  is bent on sacking to reduce costs.

However, the media aide to the governor, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon, did not pick calls put to his telephone to get his principal’s reaction to the workers’ claims.

Also, the text message sent to him was yet to be responded to as at the time of filing this report.