Date Published: 04/30/09

Suspend all threats of strike now, HURIWA tells doctors

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused non-Governmental Organization has on Thursday urged the leadership of the Nigerian Medical Association to suspend their recent threat to embark on an industrial action over the failure of the Federal Government to agree to a wage rise for Doctors in public health facilities across Nigeria. The Rights Group stated that the call on medical workers to put off any threat of industrial action now was necessitated by the global pandemic of swine flu virus because according to it Nigeria is not isolated from the rest of the World.

The Rights Group also condemned what it calls the Federal Government’s persistent failure to comply with agreements reached between it and representatives of the various trade and professional unions and bodies in Nigeria including the Association of Senior Staff of Nigerian Universities [ASSU], the Nigerian Medical Association and other professional bodies which has resulted in the widespread threats of industrial action by public service workers across the country.

The national leadership of the Nigerian Medical Association had recently briefed the media and gave the Federal Government twenty one days to implement the enhanced salary structure for medical doctors in public health institutions or the association will call out all her members in those public hospitals on strike indefinitely.

HURIWA in a statement endorsed and made available to journalists by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko appealed to the medical workers to shelve the strike action in the spirit of the humanitarian attribute of the medical field, even as it called on the Nigerian Medical Association to withdraw the threat to embark on strike within twenty one days because of the ongoing global health crisis generated by the spread of the deadly swine influenza which may affect Nigeria if comprehensive emergency medical measures are not put in place. HURIWA argued that the threat by the doctors to embark on strike at this time smacks of insensitivity to the emerging health emergency in the global community because of the fact that the services of medical doctors are urgently needed by citizens at this crisis period.

Recalling that the swine influenza which is also known as swine flu was first reported in Mexico South America on April 16 th 2009 and has been confirmed to have caused the death of over one hundred patients in that country, the Rights Group also reminded the Nigerian Medical Association that the World Health Organization had just issued health alert to the second highest threat level of five warning that the deadly flu infection has the potential of resulting to a worldwide pandemic and therefore Countries including Nigeria should take adequate measures to avoid or contain the spread of the deadly swine flu virus.

HURIWA stated that though the Nigerian Medical Association has a good case to threaten the Federal Government with an indefinite industrial action particularly when the successive federal administrations have demonstrated an unhealthy disposition to always renege on all agreements reached through constructive dialogues with representatives of trade and professional unions and bodies, but the Rights Group drew the attention of the medical doctors in Nigeria to the possibility that the larger population of Nigerians may misconstrue the essence of the recent threat to wage an industrial action particularly at this inauspicious time when the deadly swine flu virus or influenza is threatening to attack Nigerians most of whom are not economically empowered to patronize the few good privately run hospitals and clinics which may not be affected by the closure of the public health facilities if the Nigerian Medical Association embarks on strike at this critical time of health emergency.

HURIWA argued that if the medical workers decide to withdraw their services to impoverished Nigerians who patronize the public health facilities across the Country, then the medical doctors would have succeeded in aiding and abetting the gross violation of the citizens’ right to life as enshrined in chapter four of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Rights Group therefore urged the Nigerian Medical Association to suspend the threat to embark on strike pending the resolution of the global health emergency that emerged with the spread of the deadly swine flu virus.