Doctors set to Embark on five-days warning strike tomorrow

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) will tomorrow begin a five-day warning strike in reaction to the Federal Government’s failure to meet its demands.

The association, after a six-hour National Executive Council (NEC) meeting yesterday, said the warning strike will commence at 8 am and end on Monday, May 22, at 8 am.

The resident doctors had on April 29 issued a two-week ultimatum to the Federal Government to meet its demands. The 14-day ultimatum ended on Saturday.

The association said the government’s refusal to either reach out or call for a meeting led to the decision by its NEC to agree on a nationwide five-day warning strike.

It hopes that within the period, the government will take steps to address the demands.

NARD, however, stressed that if the current government, although in transition, does not intervene meaningfully, it would embark on a full-blown indefinite strike nationwide.

President of the NARD, Dr. Emeka Orji, called on the President-elect, Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to bring his experience to bear and intervene in the issue.

He stated that the intervention of the President-elect will send a message of hope to its members, and indeed, Nigerians, that his government will not be a strike-mongering administration.

Among the demands by the doctors are 200 per cent review of their Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS), payment of the 2023 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF) and issuance of a circular by the House of Representatives jettisoning the bill by Ganiyu Johnson, which seeks to stop young doctors from leaving the country without a five-year service period.

Other demands are the issuance of a circular by the Federal Ministry of Health for the replacement of doctors and nurses that have left the system with new ones, and the payment of salary arrears, improvement in hazard allowance by state governments, among others.

Orji said: “We issued a 14-day ultimatum expecting that the government will address many of these issues or at least call us for negotiation. But there was no attempt by the government to try to resolve it.

“The only attempt we saw was the official invitation to a meeting by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, which was cancelled at the last minute without any notice or tangible explanation.”

“The Federal Ministry of Health did not bat an eyelid or make any attempt to resolve these issues. And our members feel that this is not something that they will accept.

“We only considered that this government just has two weeks, and it will be unfair to welcome the government of the President-elect, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu with an indefinite strike. It is also not good for Nigerians for whom we believe this struggle is.

“However, at the expiration of the five-day warning strike, we are going to meet again. We believe that the incoming administration is also seeing what is happening.

“If this current government feels that they have finished their administration and that government cannot run again until they handover, we believe that the incoming government should wade in at this point, and at least call for negotiation so that we will know what exactly is going on.

“If we do not have any meaningful inputs to help convince our members at the end of the five-day warning strike ultimatum, then, the National Officers cannot guarantee that we are not going to proceed on an indefinite strike action.”

Urging the President-elect to intervene, the doctors said: “We know the capacity and the experience of the President-elect Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu to resolve issues like this. He is going to be sworn-in in about two weeks.

“As far as we are concerned, this is the time for him to step in because we have been going around to engage this government, but their body language is that they are packing up.

“We believe that the President-elect can intervene at this point to arrest the situation. If we see this happen, it will be easy for us to convince our members to give the incoming administration the benefits of the doubt and not to proceed on an indefinite strike.”