Strike: JOHESU urges Nigerians to intervene
Striking health workers under the aegis of Joint Health Sector Unions have urged the public to intervene in the matter leading to their ongoing nationwide industrial action embarked on since May 26. JOHESU Chairman in Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido, Ekiti Branch, Oje Oladeji, noted that the welfare of the health workers was necessary for them to effectively discharge their duties in the hospitals and therefore urged the public, who are bearing the brunt of the ongoing strike, to appeal to the Federal Government to meet their needs.
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Oladeji, who is also the Chairman of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria in the hospital, spoke alongside the chairman of the Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals in FETHI, Ayodeji Ogunrinu, and that of the Senior Staff Association of Universities Teaching Hospital and Allied Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI) counterpart, Tunde Oluwaseun at a conference held at Ido Ekiti.
He said the health workers’ sundry welfare demands and non-adjustment of their Consolidated Health Salary Scheme for over 10 years were reasons for the strike.
He said, “We can’t be working without earning what is due to us. There is no way you can treat the patients happily when you are not happy. We plead with everybody to appeal to the Federal Government that these people on strike, whose actions have grounded hospitals, are the effective ones as far as the hospital setting is concerned. It is an indefinite strike which only meeting our demands can end,” he said.
The NUAHP boss, Ogunrinu, who said the Federal Government had since done adjustments to the Consolidated Medical Salary Scale of medical doctors, wondered why it could not do the same for CONMESS of the health workers despite having done the computation. He attributed poor welfare to the brain drain plaguing the health sector.
He said, “One of the causes of brain drain is the poor welfare package of healthcare workers. The way out is to improve the welfare package for healthcare workers, hazard allowance, and CONHESS adjustment as agreed earlier by labour leaders and government,” he added.
The SSAUTHRIAI chairman, Oluwaseun, alleged injustice in the sector, noting that an adjustment was carried on a particular salary structure and none was done for the other.
“The caregiver also needs to be happy to make the patients happy. What we are clamouring for is that when you are adjusting one, please see to the other and adjust it such that our salaries would be able to take us home,” he added.
Wumi/Punch
