The Director General of Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Dr. Salihu Lukman, has described both the Minister of Labour, Dr. Chris Ngige and the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire as ineffective at their duty posts for being unable to proactively pre-empt strikes of health workers in the country.He said as loyal members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ngige and Ehanire should wake up to their responsibility and end the political embarrassment coming with huge cost to lives to citizens.
Lukman, in a statement issued Sunday and titled: ‘Labour Issues and Need for Reorientation in Nigeria’, said the ministers and all stakeholders must as a matter of urgency lock themselves in the most qualitative form of negotiations with all workers in the health sector to restore some minimum standards in the sector.
“It is possible that the Ministry has had some consultations and initiated processes of dispute settlement that are not reported. Be that as it may, to the extent that they were unable to pre-empt the strikes, they were ineffective. Being ineffective also made it possible for leaders of unions and workers’ organisations to concentrate more in terms of power struggles between them and the government than engage in collective bargaining negotiations.
“It is quite frustrating, when political appointees, such as Ministers of Labour and Health are unable to proactively preempt strikes of health workers in the country. As loyal members of APC, being the governing party, we must appeal to our Ministers of Labour and Health to wake up to their responsibility and end this political embarrassment coming with a huge cost to lives of citizens,” he said.
The director-general recalled that on August 2, 2021, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) began an indefinite nationwide strike over demands for improved conditions, payment of salaries ranging between two to 19 months by some state governments, failure to domesticate Medical Residency Training (MRT) Act 2017 in states, among others.
Lukman noted that the frequent strikes by Resident Doctors and health workers generally were unfortunate, avoidable and always led to preventable deaths of patients in the country. The director-general said given the cost to human lives from strikes by health workers, it was quite alarming that strikes in a sector as important as health would be taking place at all.
He added: “Priority attention must be given to the issue of redefining Nigerian federalism to ensure that labour issues, including negotiations for wages and terms of conditions of services and resolving all challenges that come with it are moved to the concurrent list of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution as amended.
“A situation whereby terms agreed with the federal government are used for state government employees will always create problems of implementation. State governments need to be more creative to introduce new incentives, which are not monetary but perhaps have higher monetary values than what obtains in federal establishments.”
The APC chieftain pointed out that under the law, provision of dispute settlement was required to go through processes of mediation, conciliation and compulsory adjudication through the Industrial Arbitration Panel (IAP) and National Industrial Court (NIC), but decried the complete absence of any mechanism to negotiate resolution or at the least,implement agreement.Lukman stressed that over the years, conciliation and mediation, as functions of labour administration, have greatly declined due to lethargic factors largely, because of indecisiveness of the Ministry of Labour.
He stated: “For instance, the processes for access to both the IAP and NIC, being the two legal bodies with the primary responsibility of dispute settlement that are legally binding, are mainly through the Minister of Labour. It is curious to ask, out of all the plethora of industrial disputes, leading to strikes, how many have been filed before the IAP and NIC to pre-empt strikes?
He observed that two of the most recently celebrated strike actions in the country may have been averted had the Ministry of Labour enforced provisions of the relevant laws in the country to compel resumption of negotiations between unions and employers, including government in the country.
Lukman said the first celebrated case was the ‘five-day warning strike’ by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) against Kaduna State Government of May 16, 2021, over allegations of wrongful dismissals of employees of the state government, while the second is the current indefinite strike by the NARD, adding that in both cases, there was hardly any reported meeting between the Ministry of Labour and parties to the disputes before the expiration of the ultimatum given by representatives of workers – NLC and NARD.Lukman said the challenge before the nation was not about lamentation, but more about creatively finding solutions.
“It is worrisome that Nigerians could easily justify why strike actions are taking place in essential service sectors such as health. There is the need to appeal to all Nigerians, not just political leaders. We need to all take steps to stop the current madness in the country, whereby we can resort to actions that consume human lives. If the argument is that we have problems created by our political leaders, we should ask the question, is our actions solving the problem or creating new ones?” he asked.
THISDAY
