Strike settlement threatens more rift in health

The Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP)—which consists of all healthworkers except nurses, midwives, doctors and dentists—said issues government agreed with NMA “contradicted agreement reached with [Joint Health Sector Union].”On Thursday, NUAHP demanded government to “clarify her position on these issues without further delay to forestall another round of strikes in the health sector.”Topping […]

The Nigerian Union of Allied Health Professionals (NUAHP)—which consists of all healthworkers except nurses, midwives, doctors and dentists—said issues government agreed with NMA “contradicted agreement reached with [Joint Health Sector Union].”
On Thursday, NUAHP demanded government to “clarify her position on these issues without further delay to forestall another round of strikes in the health sector.”
Topping the 15 issues is reinstatement of the position of DCMAC—deputy chairman of medical advisory committee. NMA wants four DCMACs per teaching hospital and three in federal medical centres to help ease the task of an original chairman of the medical advisory committee (CMAC).
But NUAHP argued that DCMACs should be abolished because it is not provided for in the act governing teaching hospitals, is not in the national scheme of service and constitutes a “drainpipe on the finances of hospitals and encourages fraud,” according to the NUAHP president, Felix Faniran.
It said DCMAC position was reserved for doctors and dentists with lecturing jobs in universities linked with teaching hospitals instead of permanent hospital staff and was used to block the promotion of staff to the rank of directors.
NUAHP insists that enabling acts only provide for CMAC not as a career position but as “one of the directors in the house,” explained Faniran.
It is set against possible government move to allow doctors skip CONMESS 3—a GL 12 equivalent—insisting it will “trigger a serious crisis” in health and civil service.
Doctors have demanded to be allowed to skip CONHESS 10 as other health workers have done for years.
“Nobody has ever skipped CONMESS 3. If government accedes to that request it will destabilize the country. If it is given to them, we shall demand for it,” said Faniran.
“If you do it for our siblings, you also do it for us but if you do it you are also capable of destabilizing salary system,” he added.
NUAHP said government conceding the title of “consultant” to only doctors whose degrees are registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria was “unacceptable” and “contemptuous” of an Industrial Court judgment last year, insisting that it should be “withdrawn immediately in the interest of justice and industrial peace.”
It is worried that government has begun paying doctors based on a scale adjusted in January but was yet to issue a circular five months after a similar agreement with JOHESU in March.
It said government was stonewalled by setting up another “highly unnecessary committee” to factor the cost implication of an adjusted pay scale into the 2015 budget.
“We demand that government should issue the circular not later than September and pay all our members at least two months arrears on or before the end of September as a matter of equity and social justice,” said NUAHP.
The union also opposes creating an office of surgeon-general unless it “must never be occupied permanently by any professional group.”
It demanded “equal treatment” based on salary levels, if government enhanced entry point for medical officers by an extra two steps.
Though NMA said last week that government had promised a review of N5,000 per month hazard allowance to an estimated 20% of a doctor’s pay, NUAHP called for a “reasonable percentage not less than 50% of consolidated salary” to be paid to each staff, beyond doctors, as hazard allowance.
It also stood against specialist allowance paid to people except honorary consultants, insisting that similar allowances approved for NUAHP members since January 2010, and not yet paid, be paid now or at least factored into 2015 budget.
Last week, NMA said it got guarantees no effort will be made to repeal established position of chief medical directors reserved for doctors.
NUAHP said any future post of CMD or MD of hospitals must be open to all healthcare professionals, not medical practitioners alone, on grounds that Teaching Hospital Act vests the position on an “medically qualified” person, which the act interprets as including pharmacists, nurses, midwives and others.
The union, which opposed earlier suspension of residency training, backed government moves to restructure the programme and called for its expansion to include other health professionals “equally entitled” to residency training. It said the Abdullahi Bello Presidential Committee had since 2011 recommended residency for other healthcare groups.
It warned that NMA “had no business with” in-vitro diagnostics, referring to the association’s call on Central Bank to withdraw a circular requiring dealers to have licence from Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria as requirement for import of lab equipment.
NUAHP also said an agreement involving JOHESU and government since May 2012 to review retirement age be circularized before the end of August.
The union only agreed with doctors on two points—establishment of a health trust fund to improve healthcare services and presidential assent to the National Health Bill “as the grey areas have been corrected to our satisfaction,” according to NUAHP.
In its demand for government to clarify its stance, NUAHP said refusal to implement agreements reached with health workers on account of pressure from NMA was the “greatest source of strife” in health.
“Most of the crises we are having in the health sector seems to come from government itself,” said Faniran, citing the appointment of two ministers for health, both of them doctors, instead of one from NMA and the other from among other health worker group.
“For the past 36 years, we have not embarked on frivolous strikes. We hope we will not be forced to join the fray,” Faniran said.