JAPA: Nigerian Doctors In UK Lament Exploitation, Slave Labour
Doctors recruited from Nigeria to work in the United Kingdom hospitals have lamented that they are being exploited.
The doctors believe they are being overworked and fear they may put their patients’ health at risk.
This is according to an investigation published in an international publication on Tuesday.
The investigation showed evidence of how a British healthcare company recruit doctors from Nigeria to work in private hospitals under conditions not allowed in the National Health Service.
One of the doctors who spoke with newsmen, Augustine Enekwechi, a Nigerian doctor, who worked at Nuffield Health Leeds Hospital in 2021, said he was approached by NES Healthcare, a private company that specialises in employing doctors from overseas, and was offered visa sponsorship and a potential job.
The doctor said he failed to notice that the NES contract opted him out of the law that protects UK workers from excessive working hours and left him vulnerable to a range of salary deductions.
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Enekwechi added that his hours were extreme – on-call 24 hours a day for a week at a time – and that he was unable to leave the hospital grounds. He says working there felt like being in “a prison.”
“I knew that working tired puts the patients at risk and puts myself also at risk, as well for litigation,” he says. “I felt powerless… helpless, you know, constant stress and thinking something could go wrong,” BBC quoted him as saying.
The British Medical Association, however, described the situation as “shocking” and say the sector needs to be in line with the NHS working practices.
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Another doctor, Dr. Femi Johnson, who worked at another hospital said he was also expected to work 14 to 16-hour days and then be on call overnight.
“I was burnt out,” he says. “I was tired, I needed sleep. It’s not humanly possible to do that every day for seven days.”
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Photo Credit: Getty