Strike: FG denies owing doctors, health workers

The federal government yesterday denied owing striking members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) doctors and health workers.

The Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, spoke in Abuja at the opening of the meeting of the Presidential Committee on Salaries with the leadership of the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU).

He said: “No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or any other health worker, including the driver, is owed monthly salary. Government pays as and when due.

“The truth is that NARD doctors fail to tell Nigerians that their colleagues who are owed salaries are the ones illegally recruited and were therefore neither captured by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation nor were their payments provided for by the Budget Office of the Federation.”

He said the money which the government owed few doctors and other workers was the 2020 COVID-19 allowance “beside the arrears of the consequential adjustment of the National Minimum

Wage and skipping allowance which cut across other sectors.”

He blamed the Nigerian Medical Association and the JOHESU for bringing segregation in the negotiation for the new hazard allowance for which, he noted, the government had budgeteds N37.5bn.

The Minister of State for Health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, said it was such a wrong time to go on strike, noting that despite financial constraints, government was committed to payment of salaries of doctors and health workers.