Health Workers To Resume Nationwide Strike

The nation may soon witness yet another strike action from the Medical and Health Workers Union, the national president of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), Comrade Joy Josiah has said.

According to him, this was part of the unanimous agreement reached by the union at the end of its meeting held at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), in Lagos.

He said that their request from Federal Government for improved pay and payment of some long overdue allowances must be adhered to, in same manner it was done for counterparts in the core medical unit.

Speaking with reporters, Josiah recalled that the battle to get the government to give the union members their right dates back to 2014 under the immediate past government, adding that same government has been playing the waiting card.

According to Josiah, the union has exercised more than enough patience and displayed patriotism for members of the public who will ultimately be at the receiving end of the planned strike action, which would be total and indefinite, at expiration of 30 days ultimatum which started at the weekend.

Josiah wondered why the government would accede to the demands of their colleagues of the core medicines within 15 days of strike warnings while those of the MHWU had lasted over five months without inciting any attention from the same government.

He lamented what he considered an unjustifiable widening of the pay gap between doctors and the MHWU members who give necessary associated health services in the health sector.

“The entry point for doctors used to be Level 9 while ours has been Level 8. Three years and you were expected to move to Level 9 while they moved to 10. So, it had always been one level or three years difference until the government made their own starting point Level 12 which now translates to three levels of gap and a whole nine years”

“Yet the medical doctors are already threatening that if government should raise our own relativity earnings, theirs too must be increased to keep the gap widening even more.

“This is grossly unfair to us and a product of unnecessary ego. But why should that be?” the union wondered.