Governor Nasir El-Rufia of Kaduna state has ordered the sack of nurses under the state employ for taking part in on-going labour strike in the state.
The state government said the nurses on grade level 14 and below were engaged in illegal strike action.
The state government also declared the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabara and other union officials wanted for economic sabotage and destruction of public infrastructure.
The government disclosed that nurses disconnected oxygen from a two-day old baby in an incubator on Monday, May 17, 2021 at the Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, when they joined the National Labour Congress(NLC) strike.
Besides referring the nurses involved to the Ministry of Justice to initiate prosecution, the government also announced the dismissal of all nurses below Grade Level 14 for the illegal strike.
A statement issued by the governor’s Special Adviser on Media and Communication, Mr Muyiwa Adekeye on Tuesday, said that “Ministry of Health has been directed to advertise vacancies for the immediate recruitment of new nurses to replace those dismissed”.
According to the statement, the government has directed all its Ministries, Departments and Agencies to submit their attendance registers to the Head of Service while Kaduna State University should submit same to the Secretary to the State Government and the Commissioner of Education.
Adekeye noted that salaries that could have been paid to the dismissed nurses will be given as extraordinary occupational allowances to the health workers who are at their duty posts to fill the gap of those absconding from duty.
The statement acknowledged doctors and some other categories of health workers that are trying to run public health facilities, “but regrets that some nurses have joined the unlawful strike and engaged in sabotage of some of our health facilities. Nurses were implicated in the forceful discharge of patients in many health facilities”.
The government also warned that any academic staff of KASU that does not report for work will be dismissed, adding that government “will not tolerate the brazen shutdown of electricity, attack on public infrastructure and buildings, locking up hospitals and forcefully discharging patients”.
He likened the actions of the NLC as equivalent to the actions “of the bandits kidnapping and menacing our citizens. Bandits illegally use arms, but the NLC is deploying mob action for exactly the same ends.
“Efforts to dress up criminal activity as industrial action do not change the reality of lawbreaking that has unfolded, including their persistently ignoring the prohibition against impeding essential services”.
He reiterated that Ayuba Wabba and his senior confederates in the NLC have been “declared wanted, and will be vigorously prosecuted for violations of the Penal Code of Kaduna State, the Miscellaneous Offences and the Trade Dispute (Essential Services) Acts.”
The statement advised “Wabba and his cohorts to report to the Ministry of Justice and the Police Headquarters to make their statements”.
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