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 which they embarked upon since May 26.
JOHESU Chairman in Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti Branch, Oje Oladeji, who said the welfare of the health workers was necessary for them to effectively discharge their duties in the hospitals, urged the public, as receivers of the effect of the ongoing strike, to appeal to the Federal Government to meet their needs.
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 his Senior Staff Association of Universities Teaching Hospital and Allied Institutions counterpart, Tunde Oluwaseun at a conference at Ido Ekiti on Friday.
This was just as JOHESU leadership began fresh rounds of talks with the Federal Government over the lingering strike.
He said the health workers’ sundry welfare needs including non-adjustment of their Consolidated Health Salary Scheme for over 10 years were reasons for the strike, adding, “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, saying poor welfare had been the reason for brain drain in 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”.
The SSAUTHRIAI chairman, Oluwaseun, who alleged injustice in the sector whereby there was an adjustment on a salary structure whereas there was none for the other, said, “The caregiver also needs to be happy to make the patients happy. What we are clamoring 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”.
