By Nathan Eyagu
SOROTI CITY
Soroti Regional Referral Hospital management has spoken out on the Soroti University 3rd year Medical student who was arrested on 2nd February, 2023 soliciting bribes from diabetic patients at the hospital.
Speaking to the press yesterday, the Hospital Principal Administrator, Omoya Benzy said the student who was arrested was assigned to the medical ward but not the diabetic ward where he extorted money from diabetic patients who usually turn up every Thursday.
The student only identified as Crypton Mutambi was arrested following allegations of extorting money worth Shs148,000 from diabetic patients who had turned up for medication at the hospital before he was reported to the hospital management who ordered for his arrest.
According to Omoya, Mutambi reported for work and instead of going to the medical ward where he was assigned, he opted to the section for diabetic patients where he started making money from every patient who had come for consultation.
“No one knew why he was there, all interns have supervisors, when asked why he was there, he said he got permission from management which wasn’t true,” Omoya said.
Omoya says the police in hospital brought him to his office and after interrogation, he opened up and said that admin didn’t send him there and later confirmed that he is a student from Soroti University and later apologized.
He further added that the hospital has been having cases of corruption that they are trying to fight.
“A student of year three is this corrupt! How about when he is done with school how corrupt will he be, the exhibit he had was about 148,000 ugx that he picked within the shortest period of one hour, it’s hard to understand how somebody sneaks to do such, it seems like he also did it last week as it can’t be the first time,” Omoya added.
He says after several consultations with different stakeholders including the university that confirmed that they don’t support such acts, he instructed the police to take him to CPS and prays police takes serious action.
He also noted that as a hospital, they are not fighting nor shaming the university but even after the student comes out, they won’t have him back but rather the university takes him somewhere else as they shall continue fighting corruption in the hospital.
“Community is good at complaining and can’t help us with evidence with fear that they may be mistreated or even killed by the victims as police can’t take action if the community doesn’t help with evidence so we them to join hands and fight corruption, as there are number of incidences happening here with our staff too especially during the evening in particular wards”, he noted
Omoya condemns such acts as a hospital as those got will be handled accordingly.
“I don’t tolerate corruption, let them come to shoot us as we promise to fight corruption until we are transferred,” he added.
By press time, the District Police Commander for Soroti district CPS Buyinza Twaha confirmed the arrest of the student adding that investigations are ongoing and once got guilty, he will be charged according to the law.
Meanwhile Julius Nyene the PRO for Soroti University confirmed the arrest of the student pointing out that as a University, they don’t support such acts.
“We heard about that and we are also waiting to hear from police on which direction to take as this is very unfortunate because it’s against our policy and it’s a criminal offense that we want police to carry out thorough investigation and if the suspect is found to have committed the offense then the law should take its course as we are all fighting corruption and condemn it,” Nyene said.
“It’s a first incident as we have our third year students attached to the hospital to get practical experience and are supposed to be supervised by the doctors in the hospital but not do anything independently, we are equally concerned how he could be allowed to carry out an activity without supervision but we want to wait for the police to give us their report,” he added.
