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Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige has described as absurd the demands listed by the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in an ultimatum issued to the federal government.
The minister said the government had given the doctors everything they wanted but that their sense of entitlement is “too much.”
In 2020, Nigige also spoke in the same direction but recanted after he came under verbal attacks from the Nigerian populace, including the doctors.
NARD had, Saturday, issued a two-week ultimatum to the federal government to meet its demands or face industrial action.
The list of doctors’ demands include an immediate increment in the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) to the tune of 200 per cent of their current gross salaries.
They also asked for the immediate withdrawal and jettisoning of the bill seeking to compel medical and dental graduates to render five-year compulsory services in Nigeria before being granted full licences to practise.
Similarly, the doctors also called for the immediate implementation of CONMESS, domestication of the Medical Residency Training Act and review of hazard allowance by all the state governments as well as private tertiary health institutions where any form of residency training is done; among others.
Speaking on Arise Television Monday monitored in Abuja, Senator Ngige said the doctors’ demands were absurd, adding they had the option of leaving the country.
He insisted employers had a right to keep employees’ salaries if the latter went on strike.
The minister said: “If the NARD who we have been managing their matter, we are giving them everything they want, including their Medical Resident Training Fund, we are paying them, even when in training, pay them a full salary, pay them all the allowances and you decided that we have not done enough. Like I said before, you have an option to go. It is left for the education ministry and the health ministry to fashion out what they can do.
“You asked that a bill by one of the members of the House of Representatives be removed and that is one of the reasons you want to go on strike. How can the government tell a member who has done a private member’s bill… It is not even an executive bill; you now release it as one of the conditions of going on strike that is absurd.
“The entitlements syndrome, the sense of entitlement is too much in this country and like I said earlier, you obey the law you look odd, you apply the law, you look odd or you are a wicked man. I don’t have any apologies for whatever I have done in the management of trade disputes.”
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