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”.