BY AKINWALE ABOLUWADE, IBADAN
Medical doctors in government hospitals in Nigeria under the aegis of the National Association of Resident Doctors have embarked on a nationwide industrial action over poor salaries, insurance benefits and poor facilities at hospitals as the nation faces the third wave of coronavirus.
The NARD president Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, said in an interview with journalists on Monday that “The nationwide strike started at 8am. It’s an indefinite strike. There will be no exemption for doctors handling COVID-19 cases.”
According to him, the industrial action was to push government to honour its agreement on pay arrears, hazard allowance, as well as insurance benefits to families of doctors who died of the virus.
He said, “We are asking government to pay insurance benefits of 19 of our members who have died in the line of duty.”
He stressed that Nigerian doctors were ill-equipped and under-funded for the job while the facilities in state-run hospitals were deplorable. He said some states owed several months of salaries and other benefits, stressing, “We appeal to Nigerians to bear with us. Doctors and their families are suffering. We can no longer pay our bills because of government’s insensitivity and neglect of our welfare.”
A total of 16,000 of the 42,000 doctors in Nigeria are residents. Doctors had been complaining of shortage of facilities, inadequate protective equipment, lack of life insurance coverage, low pay and unsettled wages.
Dr Temitope Hussein, President, NARD, UCH, Ibadan, said in an interview on Monday that doctors at the University College Hospital had not been paid for three months.
At the University of Ilorin, the management said that skeletal services would be held by consultants in view of the ongoing strike by NARD.
