The Senate Committee on Health has faulted the strike embarked upon by resident doctors, asking Nigerians to hold the doctors responsible if any patient dies on account of the strike.
Chairman of the committee, Ibrahim Oloriegbe, said this during a public hearing on the ‘Federal Medical Centre, Mubi, Adamawa State (Establishment) Bill, 2021’ sponsored by Senator Aishatu Ahmed (Binani).According to him, the National Assembly made every effort to avert the strike, to no avail.
“We had a marathon meeting on March 21 and agreed on all the issues that were raised by the resident doctors,” he said, adding that three germane issues, including the payment of salary to house officers, were the major reasons they wanted to go on strike.
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“The second one was what they claimed to be payment to local resident doctors, which was an aberration, but the government agreed to commence payment, which has started.”
He said most of the other issues that were raised were not even issues within the purview of the Federal Government because they were issues of state governments.
According to him, there are issues that relate to things that happened in 2014, 2015, which the Federal Ministry of Finance reportedly said that a committee had been set up to look at them.
“So we are surprised that the resident doctors went on strike. However, we are not reneging. My counterparts in the House of Representatives are meeting with the resident doctors,” Oloriegbe said. He appealed to the doctors to go back to work.