Strikes: PSN threatens ‘vote of no confidence’ on Health Minister

As the strike action embarked upon by the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) continues, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) on Wednesday tasked the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole to see himself as Minister for all healthcare professionals and not for a segment of the system. The society also threatened to mobilize its members […]

As the strike action embarked upon by the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) continues, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) on Wednesday tasked the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole to see himself as Minister for all healthcare professionals and not for a segment of the system.

The society also threatened to mobilize its members to pass a ‘vote of no confidence’ on the Minister of Health if he fails to do justice and equity among healthcare professionals.

National President of PSN, Ahmed Yakasai while addressing newsmen in Lagos said the ongoing strike by health workers which has become a recurring decimal was unwholesome, lamenting that the clamours bothering on welfare packages for workers from all sides of the divide “appear to have been grossly mismanaged by government at all levels over the years.”

He recalled that as a young pharmacist, he was employed on a grade level 08 step 2 while doctors were employed on GL 08 step 3 because of the one year difference in the duration of training.

He said, “After the mandatory one year youth service, pharmacists proceeded to GL 09 step 2 and doctor GL 09 step 3. This was the pattern till the Olikoye-Kuti leadership in the Federal Ministry of Health got the military administration of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida to approve the Medical Salary Scale (MSS), a discriminatory salary wage in favour of medical doctors in public service”.

According to him, the MSS obviously disrupted the equilibrium of public sector wages. He observed that after tinkering with the hitherto existing public sector wage structure in 1991, the salaries of pharmacists and doctors “was distorted significantly”.

“From an initial difference of N7.00 monthly or N84.00 per annum prior to 1991, the difference in entry point for these two personnel now runs into about N500, 000 per annum”, he said.

Yakasai lamented that seven months after an agreement was reached with the government to adjust the salary scale of health workers to achieve some level of parity, nothing has happened.

“We have to be human if truly we want to serve humanity but with the way things are going, I think it is high time for the government to be sincere. The Minister of Health is not the Minister of Doctors. He is a father of all, he is a father of all healthcare professionals”, he said.

To stem the tide of industrial harmony in public service, he urged the FG to urgently restructure the wage pattern “to fit into one universal scale which gives preferential entry point to those who have longer duration of training to enable them enter at higher steps on the Universal Salary Scale as a permanent intervention”.