Oladayo Olabampe, the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) chairman at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, has appealed to the federal government to come to the institution’s aid.
Mr Olabampe, while reacting to the power outage at UCH, told journalists on Monday in Ibadan that the hospital needed assistance to survive.
There has not been light at UCH since October 26, when the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) disconnected the hospital due to accumulated debts.
Mr Olabampe, who decried the bill from IBEDC as alarming and outrageous for a hospital such as UCH, said the government had to assist the health facility by stepping in.
“The bill is killing. IBEDC put UCH on Band A, but we can’t afford the bill for Band A. This is why the hospital management told the company to remove UCH from Band A and put it in Band B. But it (IBEDC) did not.
“So, we now want the government to prevail on IBEDC to return UCH to Band B, where it can afford to pay. Philanthropists and well-meaning Nigerians should also come to UCH’s aid and support it,” he said.
The JOHESU chairman noted that federal government-owned hospitals such as UCH were put in place for “welfare.”
“So, IBEDC should just cooperate with the UCH management to settle some part of the bill for now and reconnect us while the payment negotiation continues,” he said.
Mr Olabampe said IBEDC has been charging UCH between N70 million and N80 million monthly, “In addition to this, we still buy diesel because they don’t give us light for 24 hours.”
The JOHESU official, however, assured that the UCH management was doing its best to ensure that light was restored very soon.
Mr Olabampe disclosed that the UCH management carried JOHESU along as the whole situation unfolded.
Meanwhile, relatives of several patients at the hospital have been lamenting the inability to get quality medical attention from the hospital due to the power outage.
Speaking on behalf of some of the patients’ relatives, one Ismail Mohammed decried the fact that his father was not attended to because the test result was not out.
“We did a test for almost two weeks now, but the result is not yet out. They have been telling us the same story of ‘no light’ ‘no light’ since then,” he said.
Also, one Walter Chimee lamented that patients were suffering because the power outage affected everything.
NAN