Medical doctors in the employment of the Lagos State government under the aegis of Medical Guild yesterday announced the suspension of the indefinite strike they embarked upon last Monday over what they described as poor condition of service. They have therefore ordered their members to resume work immediately.
Briefing reporters after their meeting in Ikeja yesterday, the Guild Chairman, Dr. Ibrahim Olaifa, said the decision to call off the strike was informed by the intervention and concern of eminent citizens including the former governor of the state,Senator Bola Tinubu, Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, senior medical colleagues, jurists, imams and other notable personalities in the state
Speaking further, Olaifa said the Guild felt sorry and sympathised with Lagosians who were denied access to healthcare delivery in the past three days, stressing that it was not the pleasure of the doctors to see their patients go through the hardship they went through while the strike lasted.
He further stated that the state government had already put mechanisms in motion towards resolving the matter. According to him, members of the group were Tuesday invited by government to a round table meeting to dialogue on how to call off the strike.
He said although their demands are yet to be met there are however strong indications that the state government is fully committed to its promise to look into the grievances of the doctors with a view to solving them.
To this end ,Olaifa said government has set up a committee that will liaise with representatives of the Medical Guild who will examine the demands of the doctors while giving government the benefits of doubt to execute the solution within a period of three months. The negotiation, he said, commences tomorrow.
According to him, the State ministry of health has categorised the demands of the doctors into three stages namely: immediate, medium and long term with a promise to look into the immediate now, while others would be treated in order of priority.
It would be recalled that last Monday, medical practitioners in the service of the Lagos State government decided to down tools over what they described as poor conditions of service after the expiration of the 21- day ultimatum handed down to the state government to afford it enough room to address some of their grievances
Among other things, the doctors said their salary was the poorest among doctors across the country insisting that the Consolidated Salary Structure approved for the health workers in the country in January 2007, which their counterparts have been enjoying had been denied them.
They also said the much noise about the standard health care in the state is a ruse as government has only concentrated hospital equipment on the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) being a teaching hospital where lots of researches take place.
The doctors said in other health care institutions in the state like the general hospitals and health centres there are little or nothing one can call equipment for doctors to work with, as they are mere shadows of themselves.
They argue that because of the much noise the government is making about the equipment at LASUTH patients now prefer to bring their health problems from other parts of the state for solution at the hospital making the workload for the doctors at the teaching hospital heavier than their counterparts in other hospitals without corresponding increase in wages.
They therefore said government as a matter of urgency must embark on necessary face lift that will ensure that other government-owned hospitals in the state are up-graded to the standard that will create a leverage in the duties of doctors in all government health institutions in the state.
Jan82009