Covid-19 Vaccinators Unpaid For Months, May Strike In Face Of New Variant Threats

While the source country, China is building isolation centers – including secret ones – and upscaling its Covid-19 prevention guidelines, control measures in Nigeria appear to be sliding without any stop in sight.

Those in charge of giving out Covid-19 Vaccines, to protect Nigerians on on large scale against the return of the pandemic, at local governments across the country appear to have been abandoned. They are owed eleven (11) out of thirteen (13) weeks of allowances.

Two out of the thirteen weeks were paid barely three weeks ago with the allowances slashed and varied for even the same category SocietyNow.Ng gathered.

“For example, the coordinators and another cadre were supposed to get two thousand and five hundred Naira (N2,500) and two thousand Naira (N2,000) per week respectively but they were paid varied two thousand one hundred (N2,100), two thousand one hundred and fifty naira (N2,150) and the likes for the two weeks combined and no payment has been made since then. We confirmed this is across board”SocietyNow.Ng gathered.

A source in Ogun state painted pictures of failed struggle to get those in charge to treat the vaccinators better, at least let them get paid “what was agreed to when they were recruited”.

The workers who have transformed into Nigeria’s first charge in the fight against the return of the dreaded pandemic that shut countries for months and virtually collapsed the global economy are threatening strike action to push for the payment of their outstanding allowances.

“We are using our funds, and resources to run government work and we are not being paid, it is especially more demanding for people working in the outreach. They are spending more on transportation and other things. It is really frustrating” SocietyNow.Ng gathered.

The work schedule of the vaccinators, recruited across local governments, demands that that work from Monday to Friday giving different cadres of vaccines to people.

Some of them are permanently based at the Local Governments health centers while others move from one point to the other to capture as many people as possible in the free vaccination scheme.

The threat to strike is particularly alarming with information coming out of China that has been corroborated by other countries of the possible return of Covid-19 in a new form and the fact that campaigns for the 2023 election are officially underway in Nigeria.

China has announced a new variant of Covid-19 and the government is unrelentingly clamping locals and visitors into isolation centers for treatments at the slightest hint of possible infection.

But in Nigeria where the biggest spreader of the pandemic is unraveling all over the country in the name of political campaigns involving the gathering of huge numbers of people, those who should help to immunize citizens against the pandemic on a large scale have been abandoned.

And the threats of the vaccinators turned first line charge against the most feared pandemic in recent history to down tools ignored.