Resident doctors meet today, to announce decision on strike

The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) will meet today to review the renegotiated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached with the Nigerian ​government.

​The body is expected to announce whether to halt or continue its industrial action.

The doctors, at the meeting  with the ​government, insisted that their salaries must be paid before they will call off the strike.

​But no payment had been made as at Thursday evening.

​A​ communique ​after Thursday’s meeting, signed by all stakeholders​, agreed that another parley will hold on November 2, 2017 to examine the process expected to have been followed through by the two disputing parties.

The Memorandum of Terms of Settlement reads​ in parts​: “The issues of concern to NARD were therefore re-addressed as follows:

“1) Failure To Pay Our Salary Shortfall Of 2016 And January To May 2017

​”​Acknowledging the need for the Resident Doctors to receive their full salaries, the meeting deliberated extensively on the accounting difficulties encountered in the disbursement of salaries to non – regular payrolls labeled ‘Non Regular Allowances’ as against regular payrolls covered by the IPPIS platform.

“The meeting further noted that the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) did receive one Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) of the sum of N13.2Billion to address the shortfalls in Public Sector including payment of the salaries of affected doctors in Federal Tertiary Health Institutions (FTHI). After due considerations by the meeting especially of the document submitted by NARD on “Salary Shortfall”, it was agreed –

“i. That the OAGF has to employ checks and balances in disbursing Government funds. Accordingly, though verifications had been done by the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), there was still need to carry out authentications. Payment would therefore be made directly to the affected FTHI for Doctors and Staff that have been authenticated, and additionally, a soft copy would be forwarded to the Parent Ministry (FMoH), Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, CMDs, NARD and NMA;

​”​ii. That the FTHIs on list A of the document submitted by NARD that have been authenticated by OAGF were expected to receive payments on or before Friday, September 8, 2017 as OAGF tendered a mandate containing 8 FTHI and pledged to forward an additional list of the remaining FTHI to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for necessary action between September 7 – 8, 2017;

​”​iii. That the 2nd batch (list B) Mandate will be treated as soon as their AIE is sent to OAGF since NARD claimed that PICA had verified the shortfalls.

“2) Failure To Rectify The Salary Shortfall From August 2017

​”​The meeting noted and agreed with NARD demand for a 100% payment of salaries to its members. However it was observed that the shortfalls were basically experienced by those not on the IPPIS platform termed “Non Regular Allowances/Payments”.