Lagos State Government Appeals to Lagos State Doctors to Shun NMA Strike

The Lagos State Government has appealed to doctors in its public health sector not to join the Nigeria Medical Association as it plans to commence on a nationwide strike from January 6.The Government said this in a statement released by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Lateef Ibirogba. He appealed to the doctors to consider the interests of Lagosians and their medical ethics and shun the proposed strike.

In his statement, Ibirogba said that any industrial action by medical practitioners would bring untold hardship to the people and would result in avoidable death of patients, as strikes in the past had done; and that the nature of the work of doctors did not permit them to embark on industrial action without recourse to its implication on the society.

“Workers in the health sector are statutorily classified as offering essential services and there are laid down process and procedures before embarking on such action,” he said.

The commissioner warned the doctors that the state government would not hesitate to enforce the “a no-work-no- pay” policy against doctors that refused to report at their duty posts as at when scheduled, reiterating said that whatever disagreement NMA had against the Federal Government should not be extended to the Lagos State Government.

“The issues the national body of NMA has with Federal Government should be ironed out with the Federal Government without allowing it to affect Lagosians. This is contrary to Sections 118, 209 and 210 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State. It provides that it is an offence to maliciously break a contract of service knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the probable consequence of doing so will endanger human life or seriously endanger public health.

“Any employee who abandons his duty post without reasonable cause will be taken to have repudiated his contract of employment. Such an employee will be held fully liable for the consequences of his or her actions,” he said.

Mr. Ibirogba said that the state government had a duty to ensure that health service delivery to the people of the state was not disrupted as the Lagos State Government had been implementing infrastructure development and capacity building in its health sector. He then appealed to the doctors to use other means to channel their demands rather than the strike option.

The NMA had on December 22, 2013 directed its members to commence a nationwide strike from 8.00 a.m. on January 6, if government failed to satisfactorily meet its demands. The doctors said that they would be protesting against poor working conditions, inadequate funding and poor infrastructure in the nation’s health sector.