The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire has told Nigerian doctors seeking to relocate to countries like the UK, to reconsider such plans as they would lose out on getting hazard allowance.
Ehanire said there is no need for doctors to leave the country as the government was working on ensuring better welfare for them.
He said, “I think we are one of the few countries giving hazard allowance. This UK where they are going, there is no hazard allowance, they don’t give doctors hazard allowance but you just get your salary, that is all because I have spoken to the doctors there.
They say it is part of your job and that is what you are trained for. They don’t pay you anything but here apart from your salary we try to add something to it with the hope that you will stay.
We also appeal to state governments to prioritize the employment of doctors some of whom have not been employed.”
Even in the UK, they are losing doctors to other countries so they think there is a movement but I think we have to look at our own situation the best way we can.
Those who were trained through scholarship or whose training was subsidized and have jobs here actually have a moral responsibility to give back because even now we have large numbers of Nigerian doctors in the UK, the US and Europe who apply to come here every year and serve even though they weren’t trained here or at the state’s expense.
It is just a moral obligation. They are called the Diaspora Health Professionals Initiative. Some spend their own money, come with their own equipment even though they owe the country nothing.”
