Workers at Kogi State’s 21 local government areas Primary Health Care Centres have threatened to go on strike if their demand for an increase in salary is not granted.
Comrade Rose Momoh, State Secretary of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), stated this in a statement made available on Wednesday.
Momoh stated that over the past two years, primary health professionals in the service of local government have been paid 30 to 35 percent of their salaries, with no end in sight.
She went on to say that the state’s health employees had it the worst recently, when the state administration only paid them 25% of their January salary in 2022.
Momoh stated, “The salary the Kogi State Government is paying to our health workers at the local government level cannot take care of their transport from home to workplace, let alone bringing food on the table for the family to survive.
“We can no longer bear this continuous hardship we are facing. Health workers risk their lives every day to safe others, yet, their salary is nothing to write home about. Who have we offended? Is this what is obtainable in other states?”
She therefore demanded that the state government should complete the process of Primary Health Care under one roof and move the PHC workers and their salaries to the State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA) immediately.
“We are also demanding that primary health care workers be paid 100 percent like their state counterparts,” she added.
The health union therefore appealed to the state government and health partners in the state to come to their aid, saying, they have continued to lose their members on a daily basis due to hardships associated with percentage salaries payment.