NARD suspends strike as Gbajabiamila intervenes in crisis

Henry Omunu, Abuja

Following the intervention of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, the National Association of Resident Doctors of Nigeria (NARD) has suspended its planned industrial action which was due to commence on Monday.

The union had at the end of its 39th ordinary general meeting in Benin City, Edo State in May, given a 40-day ultimatum calling for the payment of outstanding salary shortfalls and arrears of its members.

The suspension of the strike was contained in a statement released in Abuja on Monday by the National President, Olusegun Olaopa, who confirmed the suspension of the strike, and said the union had to put it on hold to honour the speaker till July 29 when the speaker would meet with the union.

Olaopa said: “It was based on the ultimatum that we gave earlier, which we served the speaker. Based on the discussion with the speaker, who actually showed good intention to intervene in the matter, we felt that it is honourable for us to meet and take his intervention.

“For now, we considered trying to hold on any action that we want to take, which is supposed to be today (yesterday), at our meeting tomorrow (today).

But, we thought that since the Hon. Speaker has intervened, we should give him the honour at least to meet with him and allow him to intervene in the matter before we go ahead.

“So, the meeting has been fixed for Monday. We are planning to make some concessions to allow us to meet with the Speaker first and see his good intervention before we consider any other action.”

-Other demands of the resident doctors as contained in their communiqué include the appropriate placement in grade levels of doctors who suffered same scale promotion and for state governments to look into their tertiary health institutions to immediately halt the decay in providing access to quality healthcare to the citizenry.