Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has convened another meeting of critical stakeholders in the health sector following the intervention of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in the industrial face-off between the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and the Federal Government.
The meeting is scheduled for this evening, according to the Minister who spoke to newsmen after he met with President Muhammadu Buhari over the matter at the Presidential Villa, on Thursday.
He said the government would go ahead to invoke the ‘no work, no pay’ charter on the striking doctors, as he described the NARD’s resumed strike as illegal and injurious to the nation at a time the country was battling with the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to him, it was illegal for the doctors to have embarked on the strike without giving adequate notice to the government even as he dismissed the NARD’s claims that it merely resumed a suspended strike.
Ngige stressed that the ‘no work, no pay’ issue had already been taken to the Industrial Court for adjudication recalling that such was applied on members of Judicial Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The Minister also said that doctors’ demands were not only directed at the federal government, just as he disclosed his readiness to confer with the State Governors on the matter through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF).
