Doctors Begin Three-Day Warning Strike

The Imo State chapter
of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has threatened to commence a three-day warning strike beginning today, Monday at 8.00am.
The chairman of the association, Obioha Emeka, who addressed newsmen at the association’s secretariat in Owerri said the action was a fall out of the meeting of the association held on the 29th of last month where the members took the inevitable decision to stand up and defend their colleagues in both the state and federal government services.
Dr. Obioha who also doubles as the chairman of the association in the South East listed their grievances as ten months’ salary arrears owed doctors at the state Specialist Hospital, Umuguma, posting of members of the association to various parts of the state without the necessary allowance to enable them to settle down comfortably for business in their areas of new posting as well as non-resolution of the grievances of the doctors at the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri (FMC) which had compelled them to be on strike for two months now.
Obioha said while the February salary of the current house officers at the FMC had been drastically slashed by the management, the outgone house officers there who are being owed two months’ salaries only received one month despite directive by the Federal Government that they should be paid the two months’ outstanding salaries.
The NMA boss who equally expressed disgust that skipping letters are yet to be issued to FMC, Owerri, demanded that the letters be issued to the association without further delay.
He decried plans by the state government to privatise the state’s specialist hospital.
Obioha therefore pleaded with both the management of the FMC Owerri and the Federal Ministry of Health to take urgent steps to avert the impending strike which he noted might not be avoided if nothing is done before the date in question.
“We are constrained to adopt the option of strike because the Federal Government and the Imo State government have bluntly refused to address our legitimate demand which is in the best interest of the health sector and we appeal to all, including the clergy, to do something in this direction before it is too late,” he stated.

L-R: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Prof. Viola Onwuliri, Vice Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Benjamin Ozumba, Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives, Chief Emeka Ihedioha and Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, at the foundation laying stone of Prof. Celestine Onwuliri Centre for Diease Control, at UNN, Enugu State last Tuesday.