[UPDATE] Vwaere Diaso: Lagos must prosecute contractors – Medical Guild

Medical doctors under the auspices of the Medical Guild, on Friday, demanded that the Lagos State government must prosecute contractors involved in the installation and maintenance of the lift that resulted in the death of Dr Vwaere Diaso.

The doctors under the employ of the Lagos State government said findings made over the past 48 hours revealed that since the rehabilitation of the house officers’ quarters between 2015 and 16 at the General Hospital, Odan, Lagos Island the lift had been defective.

They also directed their members living in the said quarters with the faulty lift to vacate immediately and urged the state government to provide alternative accommodation.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos Friday evening, the Chairman of, the Medical Guild, Dr Sah’eid Ahmad, said following numerous complaints, the lift, which was reinstalled in 2021, was inoperable on the day of commissioning.

Ahmad said: “Following our several complaints, in 2021, when a pair of lifts was reinstalled at the quarters by one HK Designs, who again subcontracted the installation of the lift to one TJ Elevators under the supposed supervision of Lagos State Infrastructure Management Agency, LASIAMA, on the day of commissioning, the record will have it that the lift they were riding into commission didn’t lift.

“With all the state officials inside and in panic on day one, everyone had to alight. It was then claimed that the failure of the lift to properly operate was due to the inability of the mobile generator rented for commissioning had insufficient power to carry the lift.”

Stating the group’s demands, Ahmad added: “Based on the findings that we have made over the past 48 hours of intensive investigations and interrogations both within and outside the panel.

“We hereby demand that brand new, certified safe model elevators from reputable companies supervised installed and supervised by reputable engineering firms be installed in replacement of the failed lift with immediate effect at the doctors’ quarters.

“Pending the time that replacement of this lift and a total overhaul of the entire facility is done, we are demanding that the state government should provide comfortable alternative accommodation close to the hospital for our colleagues residing in the quarters.

“Immediate formal psychological support system should be commenced for every affected resident in that building.

“We demand that all contractors both primary and subcontractors involved in the installation and the failed maintenance of the disastrous lift be found culpable and made to face prosecution by appropriate agencies to the full extent of the law.

“Upon the observation and apparent disdain that doctors, medical practitioners in this state seem to experience when facing members of the other agencies must stop forthwith.

“We demand that all outstanding payments owed to doctors including promotion, hazard allowance, and regularisation must be paid with immediate effect.

“All infrastructures and facilities within public health institutions such as Lagos Island Maternity Hospital, Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba and indeed all public health institutes in the state must be under the direct supervision of the host hospital management.

“We also demand that the memory of our late colleague doesn’t vanish and be swept under the carpet of bureaucracy, politics and semantics, we demand that the state government immortalises Dr Diaso.”
They appealed to the state government to support the family of the deceased doctor, saying that, the father passed out immediately after he was told the daughter had died.