Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has said that with the right incentives and encouragement, an enabling environment for investment in the health sector and a sense of patriotism, the brain drain in the sector could be stemmed.
Obaseki said this on Monday, May 30, 2022, when he played host to the new executives of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) at the Hospital Management Agency, who paid him a courtesy visit in Government House, Benin City.
Welcoming his guests, the Governor explained that, “Healthcare is global and standardized and as such, we need to measure up. We need to restructure our healthcare system in the State. The COVID-19 pandemic is an eye-opener for us as everyone was restricted from moving around. The lesson is that we must fix our healthcare system.”
He maintained: “We have insisted on healthcare reforms, this is why I brought down the central hospital to decentralize the healthcare system in the State, ensuring that there is at least one healthcare facility in every community to ensure healthcare is closer to the people.
“My focus is on how to produce more doctors by strengthening the basic education system and giving quality education to produce more doctors for the State. We need more than 200 new doctors in the system, who will be in the community to take charge of the PHCs across the State and must be motivated and encouraged to stay here.”
Emphasizing the need for all stakeholders in the sector to support his administration’s health reforms, he said: “The system we inherited and structure put in place at that time was meant for that time, but today the society has changed, leading to the reforms in our health sector. We must rethink the sector we inherited.
“We need more doctors, particularly with the way the doctors are traveling out for greener pastures. What we need is to strengthen the institutions that produce doctors. We are strengthening our educational system to produce more doctors.”
Obaseki explained that the N40,000 new minimum wage approved by his administration “is to help those at the bottom to pass the poverty threshold.
He added: “Doctors are special breeds of civil servants and earn more and should not be asking for minimum wage. You are civil servants but the only set of civil servants who earn more than the governor. A consultant in your system earns twice what I earn as a governor. Why should you be asking for minimum wage? What the government did is to help those at the bottom because people go through a lot every day.
“Certainly, there are allowances due to you but subject to negotiation. We don’t like making promises we cannot fulfill as a government. This is one of the quarrels we have with the federal government. You can’t go and negotiate a labour contract and impose it on us.
“In Edo, we respect labour which is why we have not had any strike regarding allowances or wages in the state as the welfare of our workers is important to us,” he added.
The leader of the delegation and president of the association, Dr. Uaboi Ovbiagele who had earlier requested the inclusion of doctors in the N40,000 minimum wage, assured the governor of his EXCO’s support for the ongoing reforms in the health sector.
