By Charles Adingupu
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has dared Resident Doctors who threatened to embark on an indefinite strike should the federal government refused to accede to their 200% pay rise demand earlier proffered as a panacea to checkmate incessant brain drain in the sector.
The New Diplomat reported that the Chairman, National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Dr. Emeka Innocent Orji at a gathering in Abeokuta, Ogun state, South West Nigeria, blamed the mass exodus of Nigerian Doctors on poor remuneration and entitlements.
But responding to the Doctors’ demands in an interview on the Arise TV’s Morning Show programme, the Minister declared that “the sense of entitlement syndrome in the country is too much.”
Ngige posited that their counterparts overseas borrowed money from banks to study medical courses in most countries, which they must pay back after graduation, Nigerian Doctors are virtually trained free, and are even being paid while on training.
Ngige said, “It’s left for the education ministry and universities to fashion out what they can do where we now train people free of charge because they pay N48,000 to N50,000 a session for medical training. Whereas their counterpart abroad pays $100,000 in the US and £78,000 in the UK.
“They borrowed the money from the bank and when they graduate as medical doctors, they are paying back. That’s why they’re not even leaving their country.
“And here we train you free. I obtained that free training. In fact, my own case, I was even on scholarship. Why won’t I be patriotic to serve my country?
“So, you asked that the bill taken to the National Assembly by a member be removed that it is one of the reasons you want to go on strike?
“How can a government tell a member who has done a private member’s bill, it’s not even an executive bill, to withdraw it? You now enlist it as one of the conditions to go on strike. That’s absurd. The sense of entitlement syndrome is too much in this country.”
The Minister stated that the Labour Act, section 43 Sub Sections 1-3 allows freedom to embark on strike, adding that the same section, states that payment would not be made for the period the workers were on strike.
Ngige stated that since he invoked that section of the labour law on Nigerian striking workers, he had become an odd man, positing that an extension of that section of that Act further states that those striking days of absence from work be deducted from the total pension package of the workers.
The Minister’s statement is coming on the heels of threat by the health workers to embark on strike following a proposed bill in the National Assembly to curb brain drain in the health sector.
Recall that the House of Representatives, worried by the imminent threat of brain drain in the nation’s health sector, had proposed a bill to address the crisis.
Sponsored by Ganiyu Johnson, representing Oshodi-Isolo Federal Constituency 2 of Lagos State in the House of Representatives, it seeks to amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act to prevent Nigerian-trained medical or dental practitioners from being granted full license until they have worked in the country for at least five years.
