Members of the Joint Action Committee of Unions, Osun State University Teaching Hospital, UNIOSUNTH, on Thursday, staged a peaceful protest over an alleged plan by management to privatise key departments including the laboratory, ICU, kitchen, radiology, morgue and security.
The protest followed what the unions described as a breach of agreement reached with management during a meeting held a few days earlier.
The unions involved are the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Medical Health Workers Union, Non-Academic Staff Union, Senior Staff Association and Nigeria Union of Allied Health Professionals.
Addressing journalists, Olumide Faniran, an elder of the unions and member of NANNM, said the agitation was over a Public-Private Partnership, PPP, which the hospital leadership is pursuing without carrying stakeholders along. He said the unions had repeatedly asked for the Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, guiding the PPP but were denied access.
“When you are undertaking something of that nature, you carry stakeholders along. The reverse is the case here,” he said.
Faniran alleged that despite an agreement that the status quo should remain, management went ahead to conduct interviews for workers to be engaged in the proposed private laboratory.
He argued there was no justification for a private lab when the existing one generates over 100 per cent revenue, noting that the workers will embark on an industrial action if their demands are not met.
“Our demand now is that we do not want Public-Private Partnership. Provide reagents and consumables to us, and we are ready to work,” he said.
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