…raise concern over Buhari’s ‘slowness’ in forming cabinet
Senior doctors in Nigeria under the auspices of Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria, MDCAN, yesterday directed all resident doctors currently on strike in the country to go back to work.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, president of the association, Steven Oluwole, said several tertiary hospitals “are currently not functioning optimally or not rendering services due to industrial action initiated by resident doctors” in the country.
Oluwole said the strike was premised on non-payment of skipping adjustment to the salary of doctors in all hospitals where “support staff” were paid such salary adjustment.
He said government has agreed with the Nigerian Medical Association that such adjustment to salaries in the health services was absurd, and issued directives to stop its payment.
“The affected staff sought and obtained legal relief, which premised its argument on the principle that negotiated salaries should not be stopped in the manner the government did.
“While we were informed that government had appealed the court judgment, the status of the appeal, or the will of government to provide lasting solution is unknown.
“The cycle of strikes and counter-strikes that have bedeviled the tertiary hospitals over sundry issues have weakened health services, shown maximum disrespect for human lives and jettisoned the established order of humanity to care for the sick.
Such abandon in hospital services was unheard of in Europe, North America, other African countries or anywhere else.
Training of doctors and other health services workers have been partially or completely paralysed, impaired, or weak for more than a year in several tertiary institutions.
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“The basis for the existence of health services have been replaced with unprecedented and unbridled activism that ignores and disrespects the ethics and established norms of unionism,” Oluwole stated.
MDCAN blamed the non-release of the white paper on the report of presidential committee of experts on inter-professional relationships in the public health sector, otherwise known as Yayale-Ahmed Committee Report, on most industrial actions in the sector.
Oluwole therefore directed all senior doctors in the affected hospitals to ensure that consultants restore services in all specialties with the full complement of staff assigned to them to discharge their duties.
Meanwhile, the association has raised concern over the inability of President Muhammadu Buhari to form his cabinet, one month after inauguration.
He said: “We took consideration of some of the dynamics in our political system. If we look at the United Kingdom, for instance, things move smoothly within hours. So, we can’t say it is because it is a new party coming in, that is why it is slow.
That is why I use this forum to appeal to our President to expedite action, because it becomes indefensible in our democracy when it looks like we can just leave that vacuum. “We should have a functional government. We had elections; we have constituted the National Assembly.
That is not sufficient to get things done. So, we have to appeal; I think our patient should run out very soon as a nation, so we have to call on our President. We voted for him and we have the voice to say President, look, don’t lay this kind of precedence of slowness to form government.
“The health ministry as we have it at the moment – I think the best person should be there – not just that he is a doctor, he must have basic medical qualification, post-graduate qualification; be a trained administrator; and know public health, because he is serving multiple purposes.
Not one who is just to administer the Ministry of Health, but such must be a chief public health officer. “There is no way of replicating that.
This does not provide for any other profession there. Once you establish the structure, anybody who wants to occupy the structure must have the requisite qualification to be there.
By: UNCova
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