Desist from strikes before you loose public sympathy, SGF tells doctors

Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal, has appealed to medical doctors in government employment to desist from using strike actions to seek improved working conditions as they may loose public sympathy following the many avoidable deaths recorded during such periods.

Lawal said while the government was working to improve the working environment of government medical institutions within its limited resources, the doctors on their part should consider what they could also sacrifice for the country in this period of national rebirth.

According to a statement by the director of press in the Office of the Secretary General of the Federal, the SGF, who spoke when he received in audience executives of the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria (NARD), said soon there would be significant improvements seen in hospitals across the country.

He also explained that doctors in Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, were not being victimised but that the problem was that they demanded that the Chief Medical Director should be sacked, which was abnormal, since they did not have the authority to make such decision.

Rather, he said they should have made their grievances known to the government for action. The SGF pointed out that government would look into the legitimate demands of the doctors and urge them on their part to consider what they could also sacrifice to the country in this period of national rebirth.

Last year, resident doctors in Owerri lamented that they had been short-changed and marginalised in their remuneration, saying it only affected the chapter of the association in Nigeria. They had urged the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency, dissolve the present interim management committee of the institution.

The president of NARD, John Onyebueze, who led the delegation to the SGF’s office, raised a number of challenges confronting the association. These include poor funding of hospitals; lack of critical equipment; the issue of improved salary structure; pension matters and the plight of their colleagues in Federal Medical Centre, Owerri.

He appealed to the SGF to use his office to ensure that government addressed these challenges.