The Alliance for Surviving Covid-19 and Beyond, Oyo State chapter, has expressed support for the industrial action being prosecuted by the National Association of Resident Doctors.
It, in a statement signed by Professor Toye Olorode, who is the Chairman of ASCAB, Oyo State, said NARD’s demands were genuine and should be addressed by government.
The statement reads:
ASCAB, OYO STATE Chapter unequivocally supports the NARD strike and calls on all defaulting governments, State and Federal, to meet the demands of the striking doctors without any further delay.
We call on ordinary people of Nigeria, as individuals and in their organisations, communities, unions and professional bodies, to be unanimous in putting the responsibility for the prolonged strike on the Federal and affected State Governments.
We recognise that the strike is all essentially about the refusal of the Federal Government to honour previously signed collective agreements, Memorandum of Action (MoA) and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
We join the doctors in demanding the following:
1. Payment of Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF). The money has been officially acknowledged to be available at the IPPIS. The Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) claimed it had sent the verified list of beneficiaries to the IPPIS for payment. But it has not been paid, only because there is no written formalized instruction to pay. In other words, the doctors are being deliberately denied payment by government.
2. Payment of arrears of salaries of Resident Doctors on GIFMIS (Government Integrated Financial Management Information System) platforms from May 2021 till date.
3. Payment of arrears of salaries of LOCUM Doctors. LOCUM doctors are doctors who have been casualised as they are being made to sign monthly contracts of employment, contrary to existing agreements directing that they should be given permanent employment.
4. Payment of the earned but unpaid salaries of the114 House Officers based on clause 2(i) of the MOU.
5. Payment of all arrears of salary shortfalls of affected doctors for the year 2014, 2015 & 2016, based on clause 2(vi) of MOU.
6. Immediate migration of all affected resident doctors on GIFMIS into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as per clause 2 (vi) of the MOU. The task of migrating the doctors is the sole administrative responsibility of officers or agents of the Federal Government.
7. Payment of the ‘death in service benefits’ to the families of deceased doctors who died due to COVID-19 pandemic complications, in the course of duty, while striving to save the lives of patients.
8. Payment of the withheld August and September 2021 salaries of all striking doctors. There is a “no victimization” Clause in the MOU.
NARD Doctors, you are marvelous inheritors of a just struggle
The struggle of the health Sector workers is as old as the neoliberal siege that advanced substantively with the formal inauguration of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in the early 1980s.
The IMF/World Bank/Nigerian ruling class program of abandonment of the Nigerian people, especially in the health and education sectosr, has continued to wreak untold and cumulative havoc on the Nigerian people.
The program is still being supervised by the same enforcers of the anti-people siege that superintended the Nigerian State since 1977. And it’s the same Nigerian working people and their allies among the professionals (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, journalists, women and the Nigerian youth) that have been maintaining the barricade since then.
We are convinced that at the end, with the support of ordinary people, nationally and internationally, the NARD doctors shall be victorious.
NARD Doctors, be assured that you are not alone, progressive forces are with you, on a world scale.
Prof. Omotoye Olorode
Chair, ASCAB, Oyo State.
