Posted on: Tue 05-10-2021

The National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, yesterday suspended its 63 days strike.

Disclosing this in a chat with Vanguard, National President of NARD, Dr Godiya Ishaya, who explained that the striking doctors would officially resume work tomorrow, October 6, 2021, said the decision to suspend the strike was reached after a thorough review of the progress they had made on their demands.

Ishaya, who explained that the suspension of the strike was not based on their parent body, Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, advice yesterday,  said the National Executive Council, NEC, had on October 1, held a full-day meeting to review the progress of the strike and weigh what they had been able to achieve that could motivate their members to consider suspending the protracted strike.

He said: “We met on October 1, 2021 but went on recess for the NEC members to go back to their various congresses and have a robust discussion of what we have been able to push through and resume.

‘’So, having considered them and see the position of the various congresses, we decided to suspend the strike officially, starting from October 6 at 8:00 am. That was the position that was taken. “

“We decided to officially resume on Wednesday (tomorrow), considering the fact that some of our members who travelled had to come back and with the insecurity in the country, people are afraid to travel at night.  

‘’So to give them time to travel in the daytime and relay the information that we have suspended the strike, we decided it should be on Wednesday. Again, we were also trying to avoid some of them having problems with their immediate supervisors.”

Asked if all their demands were met, Ishaya, who could not say yes or no, explained: “That is why we say suspension because when we looked at the demands, there were points that have actually been significantly addressed and there were some that have been stalemated because the government was invoking the Trade Dispute Act on us and those parts the government was invoking state that  ‘you shouldn’t pay any remuneration to any employee who has engaged in any form of lockout or strike’.

“Some of the minimal demands were difficult to achieve since they say they won’t pay we are on strike. One of it was the fact that we demanded that some of our members should be enrolled into IPPIS and their arrears of four to six months be paid to them.

‘’The government said it had enrolled them but they are not able to pay-roll them because we are on strike and without being pay-rolled, they cannot get their arrears.

‘’So that was the stalemate that we had with the government, in addition to the issue of medical residency.’’

He said the government insisted that since their migration to IPPIS, they had not received any salary to verify if they were really the owners of those accounts.

‘’So we have to give a window so that their salaries will be paid in order to identify their accounts, so their arrears will also be pushed into those accounts. That was where we felt there was a stalemate that needed to be cleared,” Dr. Ishaya said.

Striking doctors had embarked on a nationwide indefinite strike since August 2, 2021, to press home their demands.

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