The House of Representative on Friday, April 9, 2021, begged the National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, to consider the plight of Nigerians and end its nine days old strike.
Tanko Sununu, the chairman of House Committee on Healthcare Services, made the appeal at a meeting between the doctors and the house committee, which lasted 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 a 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 promise extracted from NARD that they were going to present the achievement so far discussed to their members in a bid to end the strike.
Sununu said the issues 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 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 Sununu.
He also said the duo agreed that the overall budget of the Medical Residency Training Fund should be taken from the 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.
