The Federal Government has appealed to the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to shelve its planned industrial strike action, citing that the government has started solving the issues and has given timelines for their resolution.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, in a meeting with the association on Wednesday.
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What the Minister is saying
- We are here because we have started solving your issues. We put up proposals with given timelines on how to deal with them.
- We will look at those proposals with you, fix adequate timelines so that the people on government side will be implementing and marking them as they execute them.
- I have held informal meetings with the finance ministry and they told me they have started solving some of the problems. The two committees in the National Assembly have also tried to get you and your employers on the same page.
The Minister added that the FG had to intervene to ensure industrial peace in the health industry, citing that this was a bad period health-wise, all over the world.
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“So, we have to think about the generality of Nigerians. Because right now, 80 percent of Nigerians are our patients because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So we have to look at the issues that way and see how we can get the best out of this situation,” he stated.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Mr Abdullahi Mashi said most of the issues are nearly solved, and that the only thing left was to get the commitment of NARD to suspend the planned strike action.
What you should know
Earlier this week the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) warned that they would embark on an indefinite strike on Thursday if the Nigerian government failed to meet their demands.