Rumpus In O’Ambulance As Workers Wage War Against Management
They Are Allergic To Change, Discipline – GM
By Ismaeel Uthman
PARAMEDICS, nurses and drivers working with Osun Ambulance Service (O’Ambulance) have protested what they described as selfishness and wickedness of the General Manager of the agency, Dr. Olusegun Babatunde and the Matron of the outfit, Mrs. Rasheedat Alao.
The workers who spoke with OSUN DEFENDER yesterday accused both Babatunde and Alao of mismanagement and actions capable of grounding the effectiveness of the agency.
However, Babatunde, in a swift reaction, said the workers were only being mischievous and allergic to positive changes effected to make each and everyone of them efficient and accountable for medical materials and vehicles in their custody.
Babatunde said the fortification of the agency, aimed at curbing absenteeism, fraud, laziness and indiscipline, which were the order of the day among the paramedics and drivers, was the reason why they were making frivolous allegations against him and the matron.
Part of the allegations levelled against Babatunde was ‘arbitrary cancellation of ambulance units and indiscriminate posting of staff to non-indigenous areas, which was a convention in the agency, stating that each local government is entitled to an ambulance with workers from that particular area.
They alleged Babatunde of unjustly sacking any of the workers who did not report to her duty post where she was posted, while the government would continue to pay the salary of such person to the account of the agency unknowing that he or she has been sacked.
Babatunde was also accused of forcing the O’Ambulance staff to open another salary account with a new generation bank apart from the one they originally submitted to the government, disclosing such has resulted into delay in the payment of their salaries by more than two weeks every month.
He was also alleged of disengaging female paramedics who got pregnant in the service, even as he did not make replacements them.
The workers alleged Babatunde of reducing the litres of fuel required for each of the ambulance, while they accused the matron of collecting money given to them as ‘gift’ by any of the families of patient they assisted.
However, Babatunde, the General Manager of the agency, dismissed all the allegations, saying that the workers were out to blackmail him and the matron because of their efforts in checkmating their (workers) fraudulent and indiscipline activities.
Babatunde said: “My first assignment is to curb indiscipline, which was about 99% as at that time. Most of the vehicles and ambulances were completely mismanaged. We had to spend a lot of money on repairing them. There was no discipline and commitment to work at all.
“Initially, when they (paramedics and drivers) were employed, they were to work for three weeks and have a week break but later, it was changed it to just a week work and three weeks break. Even at that, most of them don’t go to work, especially those who have their units in their areas of residence. Those who work are the ones in Osogbo and those posted to busy highways.
“We discovered that most of them were into other government empowerment schemes like O’YES, NPOWER, etc. We fished those people out and disengaged them. We put a lot in places and part of which is the creation of an External Monitoring Team that will go to all our units three times a week to check whether our staff are there and to also look at the conditions of our ambulances.
“There is a rule that for anyone to leave his duty post, he or she must inform his supervisor and anybody who fail to do so, N5, 000 will be deducted from his or salary and if that occurred three times, the person will be suspended without getting any salary.
“This is just to make them conform and we are getting results but they were not happy about it. To curb absenteeism, we secured free accommodation in every local government with the aim of posting people outside their indigenous area and we achieved that but they don’t like it at all.
“They were told from the beginning that a pregnant woman cannot work with us and even if the lady was not pregnant before he joined us, once she is pregnant, we have to disengage her because there is no place in the world where a pregnant woman will be doing an emergency service. However, she is free to come back after she delivered and could work without bringing her child to duty.
“They only work for just a week in a month and most of them will even not want to come to work! They just want to be receiving salaries. We have some of them engaging outsiders to cover up for them when duty calls. We found out that some of them have left the agency but refused to report to us. Such people, as discovered, had negotiated with other workers to be covering for them and be paid N5, 000. It was bad as that.
“They could not account for medical consumables in their custody. We discovered that some of them go home with remnants of consumables in their custody after their duty. Those are the things we were correcting that made them to be blackmailing us.
“We don’t owe them salaries. Their salaries are being paid regularly with the civil servants’. With what we are putting in place, O’Ambulance is now more efficient. You can ask people around.”
