House of Representatives on Thursday moved to avert a nationwide industrial action by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) following threats by the union to down tools if the Federal Government did not meet their demands within 21 days.
The House therefore mandated the joint Committee on Health and Labour and Productivity to urgently interface with relevant stakeholders in the health sector with the view to ensure immediate resolution of the crisis and report back within 14 days.
The resolution was passed following the adoption of a motion under matters of urgent public importance sponsored by Kingsley Chinda.
Pending the proposed tripartite meeting with the parties, the lawmakers urged the resident doctors to rescind their decision to embark on a nationwide strike in the interest of Nigerians and allow for the intervention of the National Assembly.
“The recurring strikes in Nigeria have in recent times assumed an alarming dimension, resulting in low productivity and poor quality service delivery by various public institutions and by extension affected the socio-economic development of the country.
“Health is of great importance in the well-being and development of any nation including Nigeria, thus Section 17(3d) of the Constitution states that the State shall direct its policy towards ensuring that ‘there are adequate medical and health facilities for all persons,” he said.
Arguing further, China said: “In recent times, there has been numerous nationwide strikes actions in the health sector by bodies like Joint Health Workers Union of Nigeria and the National Association of Resident Doctors, among other bodies that operate in that sector.
“The proposed strike by NARD bothers on issues of payment of salaries and wages of their members, particularly in Abia, Imo, Kogi and Osun states, among others. Other issues include better conditions of service; appropriate placement of their members in federal and state tertiary hospitals across the country; reversal of sack of their members in some hospitals; adequate funding of residency programme, and upgrading of public health facilities,” he said.
Chinda explained that the recurring nature of these strikes in the nation’s health sector has continued unabated because government’s effort so far in addressing the problem have been mere palliatives and for the most part very ineffective as it does not seem to have a sustainable solution on how best to curb or deal with the problems.
He said unless and until positive and permanent or sustainable steps and efforts are taken or made to curb incessant strikes in the health sector, achieving the health component of objective of the Millennium Development Goals would be unrealistic.
