NAN-HG-1
Doctors
By Mohammed Lawal
Zaria (Kaduna State), Sep. 7, 2017 (NAN) The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) chapter has urged its members nationwide to sustain the 100 per cent compliance with the ongoing strike.
Its Secretary, Dr Sam Kwis, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Zaria, Kaduna State on Thursday as the nationwide strike enters the third day.
The current industrial unrest in the health sector is the second in the life of this government.
Issues in dispute include salary shortfall of 2016 and January to May 2017; failure to rectify the salary shortfall from August 2017; failure to circularise house officers’ entry point; and the failure to correct the stagnation of promotion of members and properly place them on their appropriate grade levels.
Others include failure to enroll and capture members on the Integrated Personnel Payment Information System (IPPIS); failure to budget, deduct and remit both the employer and employees’ contributions and NARD members’ pension to retirement savings account since 2013.
Kwis said the call for the sustenance of the strike became necessary in view of the inability of the Federal Government to fulfil some agreements reached between the parties involved.
“We are appealing to our colleagues all over the federation not to relent in their effort to fight for their legitimate right.
“Our members are the only people in the health sector that are not getting their complete salaries.
“Other health workers are getting their salaries except resident doctors,” he said.
According to him, in some hospitals, some doctors receive their full salaries while some are not getting.
“Of recent, Aug. this year, we have another 17 centres that experienced a shortfall, again, in Jan. 2016 there was a shortfall even in the percentage of salaries.
“In Jan. and Feb. 2017 we also experienced a sillier shortfall. We went to the ministry and lodged complain, yet nothing was forthcoming.
“We also have another issue of incorporating the resident doctors on Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
“We are government employees, we feel that the IPPIS platform is more transparent for the payment of salaries, we should therefore be captured,” he noted.
On the issue of pension, the secretary said resident doctors were civil servant, working like any other civil servant, hence, they were entitle to pension too.
“After putting eight to ten years depending on the department of residency training but government is not remitting its counterpart funding for pension, it means we are being cheated.
“Again, the National Health Act which had been passed into law, we want government to implement it, so that problems in the health sector in terms of government policies, beurocracy, equipping, financing will be addressed,” he said.
He assured that if implemented it would lead to smooth running of health institutions in the country, as there would be more funds to employ staff, to equip the hospitals to be able to render basic services.
“People now have to run to nearby countries like Ghana for radiotherapy because radiotherapy machines in the country are not functional.
“As I am talking the only one machine in all of the seven centres across Nigeria that is functional for the treatment of cancer is the one in Zaria and it is obsolete,” he noted. (NAN)
KLM/YEE
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Edited by Emmanuel Yashim