PHARMACISTS, under the aegis of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), have condemned the threat by medical doctors under the umbrella of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), to begin a nationwide strike on July 1, 2014, if their 24 demands were not met.

PSN President, Mr. Olumide Akintayo, while speaking with journalists in Lagos Tuesday, urged health workers, under the aegis of Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) and its labour allies, to “immediately proceed to the appropriate arbitration courts to seek judicial redress if government proceeds to dialogue with any unlawful group in trade disputes from now on in the health sector.”

 

The PSN president also urged government to ignore the threats of the NMA and advised it to pursue any legitimate demand in line with due process. www.medicalworldnigeria.com

Akintayo said: “The PSN has noted with some concern recent pronouncement of the leadership of NMA at a press conference in Abuja where it gave some conditions precedent to avert a nationwide strike of doctors in Nigeria.”

Akintayo blamed the government for the attitude of medical doctors and their frequent strikes. He explained: “The PSN puts on record once again that it is government at all levels that creates undisguised incentives to the NMA and its allies to continue to serve strike notices. It is common knowledge the NMA, National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and similar platforms, are professional groups and, therefore, cannot legitimately assume the responsibilities of Trade Unions, which engage government in labour disputes.

 

“Rather than government tackling this aberration frontally once and for all, it continues to legitimise the illegality of these medical groups through unlawful dialogues and negotiations. This has strengthened successive leaderships of these groups to exploit the gaffes in the system to infringe on the rights of lawful stakeholders in Nigeria. The PSN, therefore, urges government to ignore the threats of the NMA and advise it to pursue any legitimate demand in line with due process.”

 

Akintayo said the resistance of doctors to approval of consultancy status for qualified members of the health team is laced with abysmal ignorance. “It is baffling that people who mouth international best practices stand on hypocritical platitudes that expanding the consultancy frontier can create chaos in hospitals. The logical question to ask is why does it not create chaos in other climes?,” he said.

Rather than continue to pursue an unfashionable and unconscionable egocentric agenda, the PSN President advised NMA to embrace rational logic to champion a cause that promotes the maintenance of ethical and professional latitudes in the team, as it affects the various consultants in different callings.

 

Akintayo said the NMA must realise that the order has changed albeit progressively forever just like yesterday’s traditional housewives are chief executive officers (CEOs) of multinational firms in the global arena.

He said the PSN, on its part, would facilitate responsible and professionally driven consultancy outputs that place premium on skills and competence on all health professionals in an orderly and responsible setting.

Akintayo urged government to keep faith with the Memorandum of Understanding and agreements at its recent parley of June 5, 2014, which the NMA is apparently reacting to.

He explained: “We insist that government has only restored relativity in the Consolidated Health Salary Structure (CONHESS) and Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) scale in perfect tandem with the 2009 collective bargaining agreements by adjusting equivalent scales on the CONHESS scale like it was done with the CONMESS scale on January 2, 2014.

 

Any insinuation that suggests a violation in the light of this development is a misnomer; which we shall resist and refuse to condone. www.medicalworldnigeria.com

“It should be a matter of embarrassment to seasoned bureaucrats in Nigeria that it is only in the health sector that you find a professional body agitating for the welfare and upliftment of its own members, but also goes ahead to peg or dictate what its contemporaries in other professions, which it chooses to denigrate and insult through references such as allied health workers or para-medicals, can earn.

“This cycle of delinquency, which was the norm, will no longer find space in our relationship with our medical friends who have always run in the mentality of emperors. What does any rational observer make of fresh agitations of doctors that optometrists who have run a six-year university programme can no longer enjoy call-duty on the CONMESS scale when they are not employees of the NMA?”

The PSN president also said the unending agitations for the appointment of a Surgeon General by the NMA is one that should attract lovers of our democracy. “Unfortunately, the NMA cabal finds it difficult to reckon with the golden tenets of a democratic order having gotten used to the era of military dictatorships when their godfathers utilised their good relationship with erstwhile military leaders to impose draconian decrees that have remained the militating bane for industrial harmony in the volatile health sector,” he said.