End strike, consider Nigerians’ plight — Reps beg NARD

The House of Representative on Friday in Abuja begged the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to consider the plight of Nigerians and end its nine old days strike.

Rep. Tanko Sununu, the Chairman, House Committee on Healthcare Services, made the appeal at a meeting between NARD and the committee that lasted for five hours.

He pleaded with NARD to consider the plight of ordinary citizens, adding that action will be taken against all the accusations raised.

“Please consider the plight of a common man who has to go and source for what to eat on daily basis.

“If these people fall sick they have nowhere to go, not all of us can afford to go to private hospitals; please consider their plight and tamper justice with mercy and call off the strike,” he urged.

He said the plea is sequel to the promised extracted from NARD that they were going to present the achievement so far discussed to their members in a bid to end the strike.

He said that the issue discussed were very contentious, adding that the meeting took such a long time because it was trying to address issues one after the other and eventually came out with some resolutions.

Sununu said that it agreed that a review of the hazard allowance must be done with immediate effect for all healthcare workers in the country.

“N5,000 remains quite unacceptable but we have not agreed on any figure, that will be left for the Ministry to decide because they have already initiated that discussion and we leave them for that discussion,” according to him.

He also said that the duo agreed that the overall budget of Medical Residency Training Fund should be taken from assigned body by the National Postgraduate Medical College as assigned by the Act.

This,  he said, is to oversee the training of resident doctors, adding that it should also be responsible for making the budgetary presentation on behalf of resident doctors so that they could be paid promptly.

He said that it was also agreed that 1,003 of NARD members were not paid, adding that the amount to be returned by over 5,000 resident doctors must also be paid directly to members who were yet to be paid.

He added that a memo should be made for the remaining 446 members of NARD that had not paid for the National Postgraduate College so that their payment could also be effected.

The chairman said that it was agreed that the House Officers must be paid within the shortest possible time.

He said that the committee came up with an agreement to set up a committee that would audit all the activities of Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) in the last five years.

This, he said, was to ensure that the capacity and ability of MDCN to carry out its mandate is ensured.

NARD officials sneaked out of the committee room immediately after the meeting to avoid journalists.

Recall that NARD had on April 1 embarked on an indefinite nationwide strike over failure of the Federal Government to honour its demands.