Doctors threaten to go on strike over none payment of salaries

The Nigeria Medical Association has said doctors in the country may embark on frequent strikes, like their counterparts in the Academic Staff Union of Nigeria Universities, if the Federal Government fails to pay salary arrears of doctors in its employment.

The association had, in a communiqué at the end of its National Executive Council meeting last Monday in Abuja, attributed the delay in their payment to the irregularities in the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System for federal health workers.

The President, NMA, Dr. Esahon Enabulele, had also announced the extension of its 21-day ultimatum issued in August to the Federal Government to fix the myriad of challenges bedevilling the health sector by four weeks.

Speaking to our correspondent on Friday, Enabulele said the new ultimatum was to give the government the benefit of the doubt whether it would show any political will.

He said while the association would not use the ASUU-FG negotiation as a yardstick, it would, however, not hesitate to take actions, if doctors’ needs were not met.

Enabulele noted that despite the position of the Hippocratic Oath on medical practice, there was a clause that a medical practitioner should be given an enabling environment to carry out his duties.

He said, “For the records, the NMA, as a professional association, has not gone on strike for over seven years. And that point has to be made and known to Nigerians. That shows that the NMA has always put into consideration the health care and welfare of the people into consideration, despite all our challenges; despite the suffocating environment under which practitioners of medicine and dentistry operate.

“You saw, recently, when some of our people went on strike. The NMA instructed those members to continually render services to Nigerians. We are only praying and hoping that we do not get pushed to the wall.

“Remember that doctors are not magicians; remember that they are part of the Nigerian system.”