President Muhammadu Buhari has been called upon by the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) to immediately sack the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, for failing to resolve the crisis that led to its one-month-old strike.
JOHESU accused Adewole of taking sides with the doctors, who had also threatened to go on strike should the Federal Government accede to JOHESU’s request.
The Chairman of JOHESU, Biobelemoye Josiah, told journalists at a conference in Abuja on Thursday that should the Federal Government go to court, it would pull out of the negotiation.
Josiah also called on President Buhari to set up a new negotiating team to take over from the current one led by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, to continue the negotiation.
The JOHESU leader stressed that as a medical doctor, the labour minister had also been compromised.
Josiah, who had called on all health workers across the nation to go on strike last week, directed his colleagues in Lagos, Kano, Yobe and Niger to relax the strike following the implementation of the agreement by the states.
He said, “The Federal Ministry of Health as presently led by Prof. Isaac Adewole has constituted itself as a major hindrance to fruitful deliberation as he has never disguised his intention to symbolise the propaganda machine of the NMA through his posturing at all our meetings, which necessitated JOHESU to take a position that the negotiations were structured to fail ab-initio.
“Prof. Isaac Adewole is on record to have insisted that the wage structure in the health sector must reckon with what was obtainable in the 1991 late Prof. Olikoye Ransome –Kuti’s dual salary system (MSS and HSS) which marked the beginning of persistent acrimony until it was corrected through the Harmonised Tertiary Institutions Salary Structure and HAPSS in 2003.
“The ministers of labour and health, who are both members of the NMA, have taken a position that parity must entail a basic salary differential in the emolument of health professionals and their doctor colleagues.”
Attempts to speak with Adewole proved abortive as he did not immediately respond to phone calls on Thursday night.
Similarly, the Deputy Director, Media, at the ministry, Mr. Olajide Oshundun, did not respond to calls.
Credit: punchng.com
