The National Association of Residents Doctors (NARD) on Tuesday vowed not to suspend the on-going nationwide strike until the Federal government meet their demands.
Some of their demands included: provision of genuine group life insurance and death in service benefit for all workers, immediate payment of the Medical Residency Training funding to all her members as approved in the reversed 2020 budget, immediate payment of the outstanding April, May, and June Covid-19 inducement allowance to all health workers, determination of the revised hazard allowance for all health workers as agreed in previous meetings with relevant stakeholders
Others are: immediate payment of the salary shortfalls of 2014, 2015, and 2016, doctors working under the various tertiary institutions should be placed on appropriate salary grade level and universal implementation of the Medical Residency Training Act of 2017 in all State tertiary institutions, and payment of all arrears owed members in Federal and state tertiary health institutions, arising from consequential adjustments of the national minimum wages.
The president, NARD, Oyo State chapter, Adedayo Williams, a medical doctor stated that although the Federal government has already called them for a meeting slated for Wednesday they are not going to call off the strike on a promissory note
“Our aim was not to endangered the lives of our patients, but we don’t want the government to play games with us because a frustrated doctor that will be not able to concentrate and likely not unstable is even more dangerous than leaving patient uncared for
“The principles of medicine are you either leave the patient how they are or you do no harm, some of our demands were met after our last agitation but there is a need for the government to dialogue with us and sort things out.
On the level of compliance by the doctors, Adedayo said that there was total compliance by members, but some patients who were admitted before the strike and on critical conditions were still been attended to.
