My take home pay can't take me home!
Anyone who was in the ivory towers in the last decade would be familiar with the title of my blog. It was a rallying cry by the Academic Staff Unionof Universities (ASUU) which decried their poor pay as watchmen and nurturers of the younger generation. Their take home pay was not able to pay the bills for a month talk less of making ends meet before the arrival of another pay check!
I wonder if doctors in Nigeria should also adopt that slogan, especially with the recent furore over non-payment of call duty allowances and a slash in salaries of doctors in Government establishments.
I'll use my class as an example of the typical Nigerian doctor until i run into examples where we would not be an ideal prototype of the problems mentioned.
We came into the University full of dreams about our future, we wanted to read Medicine, we were the cynosure of all eyes especially of those other students who wanted to read Medicine but could not gain admission. Our odyssey had actually started much earlier having had to sit at home for a year 1996 because of the widespread ASUU strikes that year, so there were no admissions.
We were admitted in mid 1997 and proceeded to spend seven years plus in school because of ASUU strikes, ARD strikes and other agitations by other unions vital to the survival of any academic programme in the University. We finally graduated and once again were faced with a huge problem- house job spaces, for those of us lucky enough we started house job five months after graduation. Why this problem? My school had graduated the largest number of medical students unprecedented in the history of Medicine in Nigeria.
The lucky ones with links to the powers that be and those very fortunate few on a 'merit list' were absorbed by my school while the rest spread their wings aand flew to prevously unheard of hospitals were nothing but fate could have taken them. The word supranumerary became the lingo. Work without pay and because of the risk of having our registration with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria rendered obsolete, it was embraced by the most unwilling participants but what could we do.
I was one of the lucky few for i actually worked where i wanted to (not my school). What was my pay like? I actually earned 45,000naira. For a medical graduate, single young lady with no dependants but actually depending on parents for extra treats, it was okay especially as the hospital i was in was off the well beaten tracks, more like a small town where the standard of living was very low, unlike lagos or Ibadan. Accomodation was provided - we lived on the premises.
My tastes were not very refined, i actually lived like a villager so i was able to save a bit from my salary. My counterparts in Teaching Hospitals earned about 80,000naira (i stand to be corrected), which for those of them that had a spending allowance of less than 10,000naira a few months ago was a huge windfall.
Does this windfall continue? Apparently not. House officers are the only cadre of doctors to experience a life of ease, with a caveat- NO DEPENDANTS. During the youth service year a doctor is lucky to be paid anything more than a third of his house job salary. For those who served in local Governments in the far North or anywhere medical doctors are cherished, you can aim for something a bit more.
As a youth corper the state government paid me 28,000naira. I was the envy of other corpers who were paid 3,000naira by the state but like i usually told them the difference in earning power was sure to change by the time the service year was over. I am now a medical Officer in the same facility where i was an intern and my salary now is only slightly better than as a house officer, just add three thousand naira to it. The case is not much different in the medical houses all over town as a medical officer which the majority of medical graduates are.
To work as a medical officer means to work in whatever capacity you are needed, the private hospital equivalent you are the locum officer. Where i served locum got you a maximum wage of 200naira an hour and you usually could find work only between 4pm and 9pm, which gave you an average of a thousand naira a week and an average of 5,000naira a month. If that is your main source of income how on earth are you to survive on doing pp's as locums are usually labelled. Your work input is never commensurate with the financial output at the end of the day.
Quite recently i met a senior of mine at a function in lagos and i asked what hospital he was working in. His reply took me by suprise he was no longer practising. I stared at him in open eyed wonder, not practising? what did he mean. He had seen the light, found the way out of the tunnel- he now worked in a new generation bank, i was amazed, this guy if you asked anyone was a budding Prof in any of the medical specialties now he was a bank worker, for me it was a real let down.
By the time he explained how he worked so hard to make ends meet and still had nothing to show for it i started to imagine what it must have been like. He had a young family that looked up to him for sustenance, so what was he to do? Remain a doctor and bring home the goodwill and prayers of the few patients who appreciate his services or behave like a 'man' who is able to provide for his family and avoid being labelled an infidel!
If you were in his shoes which would you choose?
I wonder if doctors in Nigeria should also adopt that slogan, especially with the recent furore over non-payment of call duty allowances and a slash in salaries of doctors in Government establishments.
I'll use my class as an example of the typical Nigerian doctor until i run into examples where we would not be an ideal prototype of the problems mentioned.
We came into the University full of dreams about our future, we wanted to read Medicine, we were the cynosure of all eyes especially of those other students who wanted to read Medicine but could not gain admission. Our odyssey had actually started much earlier having had to sit at home for a year 1996 because of the widespread ASUU strikes that year, so there were no admissions.
We were admitted in mid 1997 and proceeded to spend seven years plus in school because of ASUU strikes, ARD strikes and other agitations by other unions vital to the survival of any academic programme in the University. We finally graduated and once again were faced with a huge problem- house job spaces, for those of us lucky enough we started house job five months after graduation. Why this problem? My school had graduated the largest number of medical students unprecedented in the history of Medicine in Nigeria.
The lucky ones with links to the powers that be and those very fortunate few on a 'merit list' were absorbed by my school while the rest spread their wings aand flew to prevously unheard of hospitals were nothing but fate could have taken them. The word supranumerary became the lingo. Work without pay and because of the risk of having our registration with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria rendered obsolete, it was embraced by the most unwilling participants but what could we do.
I was one of the lucky few for i actually worked where i wanted to (not my school). What was my pay like? I actually earned 45,000naira. For a medical graduate, single young lady with no dependants but actually depending on parents for extra treats, it was okay especially as the hospital i was in was off the well beaten tracks, more like a small town where the standard of living was very low, unlike lagos or Ibadan. Accomodation was provided - we lived on the premises.
My tastes were not very refined, i actually lived like a villager so i was able to save a bit from my salary. My counterparts in Teaching Hospitals earned about 80,000naira (i stand to be corrected), which for those of them that had a spending allowance of less than 10,000naira a few months ago was a huge windfall.
Does this windfall continue? Apparently not. House officers are the only cadre of doctors to experience a life of ease, with a caveat- NO DEPENDANTS. During the youth service year a doctor is lucky to be paid anything more than a third of his house job salary. For those who served in local Governments in the far North or anywhere medical doctors are cherished, you can aim for something a bit more.
As a youth corper the state government paid me 28,000naira. I was the envy of other corpers who were paid 3,000naira by the state but like i usually told them the difference in earning power was sure to change by the time the service year was over. I am now a medical Officer in the same facility where i was an intern and my salary now is only slightly better than as a house officer, just add three thousand naira to it. The case is not much different in the medical houses all over town as a medical officer which the majority of medical graduates are.
To work as a medical officer means to work in whatever capacity you are needed, the private hospital equivalent you are the locum officer. Where i served locum got you a maximum wage of 200naira an hour and you usually could find work only between 4pm and 9pm, which gave you an average of a thousand naira a week and an average of 5,000naira a month. If that is your main source of income how on earth are you to survive on doing pp's as locums are usually labelled. Your work input is never commensurate with the financial output at the end of the day.
Quite recently i met a senior of mine at a function in lagos and i asked what hospital he was working in. His reply took me by suprise he was no longer practising. I stared at him in open eyed wonder, not practising? what did he mean. He had seen the light, found the way out of the tunnel- he now worked in a new generation bank, i was amazed, this guy if you asked anyone was a budding Prof in any of the medical specialties now he was a bank worker, for me it was a real let down.
By the time he explained how he worked so hard to make ends meet and still had nothing to show for it i started to imagine what it must have been like. He had a young family that looked up to him for sustenance, so what was he to do? Remain a doctor and bring home the goodwill and prayers of the few patients who appreciate his services or behave like a 'man' who is able to provide for his family and avoid being labelled an infidel!
If you were in his shoes which would you choose?
For those who think that 'escaping' the shores of the country would make things better are only jumping from the pot into frying pan.
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