FMC Umuahia worries over cost of power, emigration

As INEC takes voter registration to premises

Medical Director of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Umuahia, Abia State, Prof. Azubuike Onyebuchi, has lamented the unsteady and inadequate power supply to the hospital, which has resulted in the high cost of procuring alternatives, considering that effective service delivery in the health facility requires a steady power supply.

He is worried that poor power supply endangers operations in the hospital, considering that certain medical equipment and services must be undertaken safely and effectively under a steady power supply.

He called on the government to help remedy the scenario by doing the needful, adding that the management of the hospital has been consulting on how to remedy the situation and reduce costs by assessing more reliable and cheaper power alternatives.

Onyebuchi also cited the emigration of medical professionals to other climes as another challenge facing the hospital, lamenting that processes of replacing the emigrated professionals are cumbersome and take years to do because doing so requires a lot of granting of wavers at different levels of authority.

In another development, Onyebuchi, yesterday, lauded the ongoing voter registration exercise on the hospital premises and told The Guardian that it followed the advocacy visit the hospital management made to the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Dr Joseph Iloh, who graciously considered the peculiar nature of hospital workers and took voter registration to the hospital premises.

He said that the development has become appealing due to the peculiar nature of hospital workers, whose patient- care duty would be adversely affected when they go to queue for registration outside the hospital.

He recalled that many of the workers that went outside the hospital for the voter registration at different times during office hours, returned without being registered, even after waiting, sometimes throughout the day’s working hours, stressing that their workers needed to get registered and update their records, to be eligible to vote and elect candidates of their choice during coming general elections.