10. NMA, with the huge sum they are paid, still wants adjustment in
their specialist allowance to be paid to all doctors on CONMESS 3 and above,
and must be paid its equivalent that is not less than 50% higher than what is
paid to other Health Workers. How can NMA be the one to decide what other
Health Workers get? NMA should go and read the Parable of one Talent Payment.
11. NMA is calling for Government to pay her members 100,000 naira
every month as just hazard allowance. How can NMA be demanding for such,
despite all she is already receiving? She is being too selfish/greedy in her
demands. Even other workers with worse occupational hazards are not receiving
such.
12. NMA insists on immediate release of circulars on rural posting,
teaching and other allowance which must include House Officers. Since 2009 NMA
and her members have been collecting teaching allowance even though that
teaching allowances as approved by the Government was for very Senior Medical
Doctors (Consultants and very Senior Registrars)that are involved in teaching
of doctors in training, especially the junior and senior interns. House
officers are the junior interns while Resident doctors are senior interns doing
a student fellowship to become a specialist .Now NMA is agitating that the
interns who are still doctors in training should be paid teaching allowance.
House officers and resident doctors by government circulars are not entitled to
this payment; it is because of them that Government is paying the teaching
allowance. How can the doctor in training be asking for teaching allowance when
he is a trainee, and who is he teaching? Since the approval in 2009 and full
implementation in 2010, House Officers and Resident Doctors who are NMA
members, have been fraudulently collecting huge monthly teaching allowances
which they are not entitled. There is no government circular or template that
approved such payment. It was in this year 2014, that the Government through
the Call Budget Circular from the Ministry of Finance opposed and stopped the
payment of teaching allowance to interns. For five years members of NMA who
were not entitled to teaching allowance have been defrauding the Government. He
who comes to equity must come with clean hands.
13. NMA calls for immediate withdrawal of CBN circular authorizing the
Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigerian (MLSCN) to approve licenses for
the importation of in vitro diagnostics (IVDS). It is so petty that NMA is
going on strike because the Federal Government (which means well for
Nigerians), has taken the bull by the horn to making sure that fake/
substandard diagnostic consumables are removed from the system, by effectively
empowering MLSCN-the Agency who has the statutory function to do this job.
Sections 4b, and 4e of MLSCN act 11 2003 provides- the function of the board
are:
(a) Regulate
the Practice of Medical Laboratory Science in Nigerian.
(b) Regulate
the production, importation, sales, and stocking of diagnostic reagents and
chemicals.
Section 19 of
the MLSCN act mandates MLSCN Board to also make rules. Section 19(d) goes
thus-the board may make rules for the maintenance of good standard of Medical
Laboratory practice and services with respect to the regulation and control of
private practice including statutory inspection, approval, and monitoring of
all Medical Laboratories including those adjoined to Clinics, Private and
Public Health Institutions. Instead of NMA to partner with MLSCN to kick fake
diagnostics out of Nigeria, she is out there encouraging quackery and fighting
a lost battle by being anti-Establishment.
14. NMA wants immediate release
of circular on retirement age: Dear Nigerians by increasing retirement age from
60 to more years how will it bring better productivity in the health sector?
When within the next ten years of a doctor starting work ,he can get to the
zenith of his career which work will he be doing? And when most of our
consultants are part time doctors because they work and have Clinics days only
once a week.
15. NMA , Residency and Oversee Training: NMA should look inwards and
stop hiding under residency and oversee training to encourage medical tourism
and waste of tax payers money. For self reliance and self determination the
Alma Ata declaration has a lot to help a young economy like Nigeria. Health has
a lot to do with socio-economic indices. Diseases in the tropics are not the
same as in the temperate region. Alma Ata declaration of 1978, encourages young
economies to look inwards locally in providing healthcare at low and affordable
manner. All over the world it is not only one group in the health field that
does residency. Veterinarians, Podiatrist, Medical Physicist, Optometrist,
Pharmacist, Physical Therapist, Doctors of Ethnomedicine, Doctors of Holistic
Medicine, Doctors of Natural Medicine etc all have residency program. Yet none
of these group in Nigeria have gone on strike because of no oversee residency
program. A privilege is not a right. There is no government law that says that
Allopathic Doctors can only become good doctors only when they go oversee.NMA
should stop encouraging this mentality that anything African is inferior.NMA
should know that what they are asking is not part of the rules of engagement.
This is the time for more humane and humble request. Indian doctors are
becoming one of the best doctors in the world not because they are looking
overseas but because they are looking inwards.
16. NMA insist on payment of salaries of her member in
Owerri: Her members should also meet part of their own responsibilities and
agreement as workers. NMA must learn to obey constituent authority, and must
make her members to be amenable to discipline.
17: NMA members and IPPIS platform. NMA has always shown double
standard on this issue. Before now, members of NMA went on strike because of
the Government policy that all worker must be on IPPIS platform. How come it is
now that NMA is just waking up from sleep, to say that if her members are not
on IPPIS she will call her members for indefinite strike? The Government policy
is that if you are not on a pensionable appointment you cannot be on IPPIS. So
how can house officers and residents be on IPPIS when their appointment is not
permanent? Moreover the 2014 Call Budget Circular from the Ministry of Finance
provides that you cannot hold more than one appointment and be placed in two
places under IPPIS platform. When IPPIS came many members of NMA opposed it
because it did not allow them to be on Government pay role in two places.
18. NMA wants to go on strike because House Officers are said not to be
part of NARD-National Association of Resident Doctors. The big question here
is, are house officers also paid the same as their senior residents? In as much
that the House Officer is a junior resident while the doctor in training to
become a specialist is a senior resident the duo cannot be part of any strike
action even with their consultants, because they belong to an Association and
not a trade Union.NMA is only calling for House Officers to be part of NARD for
them to be part of their numerous illegal strike action.
19. NMA accuses Medical Laboratory Scientists of harasment.NMA has
shown herself that she is a Joker. The world knows that it is the other way
round. That it is members of NMA that are harassing Medical Laboratory
Scientists in Nigerian. The number of Medical laboratory Scientist that NMA
members have instigated their sack/termination of appointment/suspension is
worrisome. But thanks are to the Most High for the Judiciary who brings hope
for the common man, by setting aside most of the sack/termination/suspension.
Medical laboratory Scientists are people who do not act on impulse, or with
impunity. Why is NMA resorting to self help when issues she has with members of
Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigerian are in court? Why is
she the judge in her own case? The spirit of Medical Laboratory Scientists can
never be broken. We shall always move with great crescendo to protect patients’
interest and the public at large, despite the provocation and lawlessness that
is being perpetuated by members of NMA in the Health Sector. The laws of the
land shall be our strength, for he who holds the mace of truth and justice can
never falter. We cannot be intimidated by her Goliath posturing.
20. NMA says-‘the endless circles of incomplete salary payment to our
members in many hospital in the name of short falls in personal cost must
stop’. This is the only legitimate demand out of the 24 demands by NMA because
the labourer is worthy of his wages. But NMA cannot call her members out for
strike based on this, because she is not a registered Trade Union but a
charity. This problem is not peculiar to only Allopathic Medical Doctors but to
all personnel working in the Health Sector.
21. NMA in her number 21 demand states ‘universal application of all
establishment circulars on remuneration and condition of service for doctors at
all levels of Government must be guaranteed’. NMA is not justified here,
because this borders on Constitutional Matter. And the Central Government has
some limits to want they can impose on the State, bearing in mind that we are
practicing a Federal System of Government, where power is shared among the
three tiers of Government, the Federal, State and the Local Government. NMA
members should come to terms that they are the employee and not the employer.
It is very interesting to note, that NMA who champions the lost battle, insists
that the approved Scheme of Service/circulars of other healthcare workers will
never be implemented is the one now agitating that even things not given by any
Scheme Service/circular must be implemented.
No comments:
Post a Comment