Resident Doctors May Call Off Strike Today

Barring all unforeseen circumstances, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), is set to call off its five-day old strike today.

This is as a result of the meeting of the association with the Labour Minister, Emeka Wogu and the Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, on Friday last week.

This is coming as the National Medical Association (NMA) has given the federal government another 30-day ultimatum to meet its demand. This followed the expiration of the 21 day ultimatum earlier given.

A source told LEADERSHIP that the strike would have been called off immediately after the meeting but for the representatives of  NARD, who had to put it on hold while insisting that they had to hold meeting first with their members before making the announcement.

According to the source, the meeting was a long and fruitful one, which left all the parties satisfied and a communiqué was signed at the end of the day by all the parties.

During the  five-day old industrial action by resident doctors across the country, following a directive by the president, NARD, Dr Jibril Abdullahi, resident doctors were conspicuously absent at their duty posts.

This action had left its toll on many hapless  health- seeking Nigerians, who had  gone to some of these hospitals for health care delivery services.

The Chairman of Kaduna State chapter of the association, Dr. Aliyu Usman Bappa stated this at the weekend while addressing newsmen shortly after an emergency executive council meeting which held in Kaduna.

 Dr. Bappa said the decision to give the Federal Government another four weeks grace was borne out of the desire of the doctors to still engage in negotiation and dialogue over the lingering issues affecting the medical profession.

“We pray the Federal Government will make best use of this opportunity to address pending matters so that the Nigerian health sector will not collapse. We are Doctors who are trained to save lives and that is why we consider our patients and how the strike action will affect them. It is in line with this, that we deem it fit to give the Federal Government another four weeks to meet up our demands.” He said.


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