EBOLA PALAVA: Lagos State Ebola Volunteers Threaten Strike Over Lack Of Payment

Dozens of volunteers at the Infectious Disease
Hospital, IDH, of the Yaba Mainland Hospital,
Lagos, where patients down with Ebola Virus
Disease, EVD, are receiving treatment have
threatened to stop reporting to their duty posts
over non-payment of their emoluments by the
Nigerian government.
PREMIUM TIMES investigations revealed that the
volunteers are being owed over two weeks of their
daily entitlements by government.
On Friday morning, two patients were still in the
hospital’s isolation ward a clergyman who had
prayed for Iyke Enemuo, the Rivers State-based
medical doctor who died of the virus and Dr.
Enemuo’s wife who had contracted the virus.
By Friday evening, the clergyman was discharged
from the centre after his test results returned
negative, leaving Mrs. Enemuo as the only patient
in the ward.
It was gathered that while medical doctors and
nurses who had volunteered to attend to patients
down with the Ebola virus are being paid N50,000
and N40,000 per shift respectively; the monies
have not been forthcoming since a fortnight ago.
Other low cadre workers at the IDH such as the
ward attendants and laundry men who take care
of the patients’ laundry have also not been paid.
“The place is tough at the moment, no
communication from the top to the ground, most
of us have worked for two weeks without pay,” a
volunteer who did not want to be named for fear
of victimisation, told PREMIUM TIMES .
“And not just without pay, initially, what was
agreed was that at the end of each shift, you take
your pay and go home.
“Right now they are just compiling, they are not
paying us, we just work and go home, and this is
like over two weeks now, no pay, and nobody is
addressing us whether pay is coming or not.
“The most painful aspect of this whole thing is
that all of us that enter and take care of these
patients, carry their shit, you know they stool a
lot, clean them up, do all the necessary things,
that treated these people are the people suffering
now.
“But those people who call themselves the
officials, the truth is that they don’t even witness
how these Ebola patients look like, they’ve not
even seen them. They don’t enter inside at all,
they don’t go in, they don’t dress in that hood
(PersonalProtective Equipment).
They don’t go close to the patients,” the
volunteer added. PREMIUM TIMES learnt that
volunteers at the IDH are spread across three
shifts daily – morning (8 a.m – 2 p.m), afternoon
(2p.m – 7 p.m) and night (7 p.m – 8 a.m).
Each volunteer works two or three shifts weekly.
“Once your shift is over, you hand over to the
people coming to replace you, collect your pay
and go home. Sometimes they compile two or
three shifts before they pay. But this time
around it’s clocking two weeks and we have not
heard or seen anything.