The Federal Government has in it’s characteristic style deceived the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Lack of political will and poor value placed on health sector has been cited as the reason the government had failed to uphold their end of any bargain reached with health sector workers.
Lending his voice to the truce resident doctors reached with the Federal Government that led to the suspension of the warning strike, Matthew Olukwu had this to say.
Strike Should Have Helped
“I don’t think the doctors should have signed any MOU without seeing a positive commitment from the federal government (FG).”
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“According to him, the government is fund of not honouring agreements made and this strike should have helped the doctors to extract commitment from government.
“Because raising this issues again with the in-coming government might not yield any possible response.”
Explaining his view on iBrand TV’s flagship programme, iBrand DayBreak, he said the government had never been committed to the health sector.
This is because they are not directly affected by the rot and decadence in the system.
Ban Medical Tourism
“Suppose there is a law restricting political appointees from going on medical tourism across the world, a lot of these anomalies would have been addressed.”
Indeed, it is not the first time that resident doctors are going on strike.
They had embarked on a 5-day warning strike to request that government invest more in the health sector to give it a face lift.
However, the doctors suspended the warning strike after signing an MOU with the government accepting to resume work on Monday morning.
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The public affairs analyst explained that the health sector required more than what was budgeted for it to cater for the needs of the 200 million Nigerians.
“Other countries where our politicians run to constantly budget good percentage of their GDP to the health sector but here we budget peanuts for the health sector.
“Doctors therefore, should have waited to see the government start releasing funds before calling off the strike because this MOU may just be a ruse,” he insisted.
