The Federal Government wrongly
paid 588 medical doctors across the country residency training fund, Labour
Minister Chris Ngige has revealed.
But not to worry, Ngige, who is
also a medical doctor said the government has recovered part of the money.
Government has intensified
efforts to recover the rest.
Ngige, revealed this when he
fielded questions from State House correspondents in Abuja.
He explained that affected
doctors were not qualified for the Medical Residency Training Fund, meant for
particular category of doctors.
He said the names of the doctors
were uncovered after a thorough scrutiny of the 8000 names submitted by Chief
Medical Directors of Federal Government health institutions for the training
programme.
The minister, however, revealed
that a substantial amount of the money had been refunded by some of the
affected doctors while efforts had been intensified to recover the remaining
balance.
He maintained that the delay in
making the refund by the affected doctors was holding back the Residency Fund
payment by the government.
” Ministry of Health has gotten
the list of doctors who supposedly are to benefit from the Medical Residency
Training Fund.
”Total submission of about 8000
names were gotten and the Ministry of Health is scrutinising them.
”We have done the first round of
scrutinization and they will now compare what they have with the Post-Graduate
Medical College and the Chief Medical Directors who submitted the names.
“The Association of Resident
Doctors, in each of the tertiary centres, worked with the CMDs to produce those
names, but now that the names are being verified.
”We discovered that about 2000
names shouldn’t be there because they don’t have what is called Postgraduate
Reference Numbers of National Postgraduate Medical College and (or) that of the
West African Postgraduate Medical College.
“So, this is it and that is the
only thing holding back the Residency Fund payment because it is there already
for… incurred expenditure has been done by the Finance Minister and an it’s in the
Accountant-General’s office.,” he said.
”So, once the verify they
authenticity of those they are submitting, the Accountant-General will pay.
“We are doing that verification
because we do not want what happened last time in 2020 to reoccur.
”In 2020, the submitted names
didn’t come through the appropriate source, which is the Postgraduate Medical
College and payment was affected and it was discovered that about 588 persons,
who were not resident doctors benefited from such money.
”They are now finding it
difficult to make the full refund. But they have to refund that money. Some are
refunding, but there is no full consideration of the account.
”That account has to be
reconciled to enable the accountants pay the next round of funding for 2021,”
he said.
On the ongoing strike by Resident
Doctors, Ngige expressed the readiness of the Federal Government to withdraw
the case it instituted against them, if they would go back to their duty post.
He, however, insisted that the
‘no work, no pay’ policy of the government would be observed because ”it is a
global practice which is also captured in Section 43 of the Trade Dispute Act
under the International Labour Organization, ILO.”
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com