Strike: Doctors Should Resume Soon – Health Minister

The Minister for health, Prof. Isaac Adewole has mentioned that striking resident doctors are expected to return to work soon, haven yielded to their demands.

The National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD commenced their nationwide strike on September 4 and this has left the health sector across crippled since then.

Speaking with journalists, Adewole stated the government has agreed to the demands of the resident doctors after their dialogue.

On what agreed upon, ‘this was to pay all outstanding salary arrears of theresident doctors to the bank accounts of institutions affected’, he assured.

“We have done that and we believe they should resume soon. We can only pay the money into the institutions’ accounts for them to disburse to the doctors, we cannot pay them individually as that would take a longer time.

“The only problem which shouldn’t be a problem is that we have told them we cannot solve that of resident doctors in the state. They have decided to put states’ resident doctors as part of their struggle and we cannot impose on state government to do same. We can only plead on their behalf with the states,” he said.

The leadership of the NARD is expected to meet today, Tuesday, to appraise the response of the federal government to their demands.

The government and the
leadership of NARD had met on
September 6 and agreed to pay the
arrears of the salaries latest September 8.

Mr. Adewole said the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the government and the leadership of NARD, agreed that the doctors would resume once the salaries have been paid.