Medical doctors in the South West geopolitical zone threatened last week to embark on solidarity strike in sympathy with their counterparts in Osun State should the state government fail to address the demands of their colleagues within the next two weeks. Chairman of the South West caucus of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Adenike Odewabi, told the media in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, that they would embark on systematic solidarity actions and public protests in six states in the zone, namely Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Osun Oyo and Lagos.
It is common knowledge that the Osun State Association of Medical and Dental Officers commenced strike on Monday, September 28, 2015 to protest the state government’s non-payment of all its members’ outstanding salaries, leave bonuses, union and cooperative deductions; as well as the non-remittance of backlogs of contributory pension deductions to the relevant pension funds administrators. The group also requested that the government put machinery in motion for the immediate implementation of the revised Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) and relativity payment to doctors in the state as approved by the Federal Government. Following the state administration’s sabre-rattling to sack them if the failed to resume work by Friday, December 25, 2015, the doctors stuck to their guns, lamenting that Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s government added salt to injury by withholding a significant percentage of their salaries in exchange of promised ‘special allowances’, without any formal or informal negotiations with the body.
Resident doctors in the state were said to have been last paid full salaries in June 2015; and had been receiving stipends that were not up to half of their monthly pay since then. Neither the sack threat nor the state government’s assumption that the doctors have resigned their appointments has resolved the logjam. The state House of Assembly had also intervened, all to no avail. Latest reports say the NMA now wants President Muhammadu Buhari and leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to prevail on Governor Aregbesola to pay the doctors’ “rightful and legitimate claims – full salary for six months, skipping and relativity – in accordance with established principles of Universal Applicability”. For his part, Governor Aregbesola views the action of the striking doctors as selfish and uncaring. He says the doctors do not bother about what happens to other citizens and residents of the state in the face of the biting economic hardship in the country. Osun State, according to Aregbesola, is facing a serious economic challenge that demands sacrifice on the part of the doctors. He said all moves to resolve the problem amicably were turned down by the doctors, who he claimed were being paid their monthly salaries without them working up to September 2015. The governor blames the doctors for allegedly going against what he called “the accepted modulated salary regulation” that applies to Osun’s over 40,000 workforce. But while the impasse lingers, patients are suffering. The NMA says, for instance, that it is being inundated on daily basis with reports of deaths and injuries of women and children in Osun, a situation it blamed on the complete collapse of healthcare services in sections of the state as a result of the strike. Patients that can afford it are forced to embrace alternative medical facilities at prohibitive costs, while the less privileged resort to quacks, with the associated risks; or die in search of medical help.
Besides, the state will most probably lose a good number of medical experts, as some of the striking doctors scout for other means of survival. Therefore, our thinking is that it is high time both the state government and the striking doctors climbed down from their high horses. They should yield grounds sufficiently enough to permit a negotiated settlement and suspension of the strike. It is to the huge discredit of both the state administration and the medical profession for the sick in Osun to keep perishing for no fault of theirs. With give and take here and there, what the NMA seeks from Buhari and APC leadership it could get from Aregbesola and the Osun State Government. Again, notwithstanding the subsisting federalist hypocrisy in the land, Nigeria still remains a federation. As a result, benchmarks set by the federal government, like the National Minimum Wage Act and CONMESS, may be contested by state governments. But they should be sincerely sorted out, based on fair and equitable parameters.
Source: National Mirror News
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