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Nigerian doctors embark on 3-day warning strike
Resident doctors in Nigeria on Monday dropped their stethoscope for a three-day warning strike to square up with government they claimed had refused to implement previous agreements it had reached with them.
The warning strike was declared by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).
Reports from Ibadan said the strike was effective at the University College Hospital (UCH) where the doctors withdrew their services in compliance with the national directive.
However, UCH President of NARD, Franklin Anor, told newsmen that in carrying out the directive the doctors decided to apply human face by attending to emergencies to minimise the impact of the strike.
He disclosed that the strike was declared to tell government to sit up and do the right thing, failure of which the association would begin full blast strike as from July 1.
Recalling the communique issued by the association at the end of its Ordinary General Meeting (OGM) at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin, last month, Anor said there had been fundamental error on the part of the government in not funding residency programme in the teaching hospitals.
According to him, "residency training is part of training process to become specialist, but there is a fundamental error in the sense that the residency training is not being funded as it is done in all other countries across the globe".
The NARD chieftain recalled the previous agreements reached with the government, insisting that "the government must implement all Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and circulars regarding skipping of CONMESS 2 and rectification of the anomalies in the 2009 CONMESS circular reflected in the circular of 3rd January, 2014".
Another area of disagreement with the government, according to Anor, is the constant submission of the government to blackmail by other workers in the health sector under the aegis of Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) seeking pay parity with the doctors.
He argued that for over 20 years, the medical doctors had been cheated by being under-paid, an observation the government acknowledged and pleaded with the parent body of the doctors, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), at their last negotiation not to seek for arrears, with a promise to correct the anomaly since last January but yet to do anything up till now.
