- Meeting of JOHESU with FGN yesterday Wed 19th 2014 ended in a deadlock at 11:50pm.
Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU), the umbrella body of all health workers and other professional in the health sector on Wednesday said with no further headway in resolving the issues of dispute, the union might be forced to extend the ongoing strike to secondary and primary healthcare facilities.
JOHESU president, Dr.Ayuba Wabba told journalists in Abuja that the union was not considering calling off the strike until all the issues in the dispute were addressed. Wabba noted that no aspect of the issues have been addressed; stressing that "all have been pending."
He warned that the ongoing strike action which has been restricted to tertiary health institutions should the government continue to treat the issue with kid’s gloves.
" We cannot pretend and limit our members that are in the secondary and primary health care centres because they are also affected. You will not be surprised if we now direct our members at the various primary and secondary health care centres to join. This is because we demonstrated enough commitment and enough time to look at these issues."
"JOHESU have overly been patient in the face of glaring injustice, insensitivity and extreme provocation by the federal government. We have been longsuffering, matured and over patriotic which also has its limits. The strike currently going on is therefore as a matter of last resort to address government's lack of commitment, reciprocal good will extended to it by JOHESU in resolving our demands on a permanent basis.
"None of the issues under contention has been fully implemented, including court pronouncement. And therefore in industrial relation, it takes two to tangle, our members cannot perpetually remain under bondage where other's demand are treated with dispatched and with seriousness and our members interest is usually not attended to.
"You can see that from the submission I made, we have demonstrated enough commitment to industrial peace and harmony and certainly these are issues that are already on public dormain and it is our request that the public should bear with us.
"Yes , we realise the fact we provide very essential services and in most cases very critical, but in this circumstance having gone through the records, we need to be highly commended. It is important also for us to state that until and when these issues are resolved, the strike will be indefinite.
" We are also contemplating how our secondary health institutions and primary health institutions will join the action. Before now we have tried to limit the action to tertiary health facilities, realising that even in war situation, we give consideration to certain issues but with the lack of commitment being demonstrated by government and a lot of falsehood, I think we need to make this point clear."
JOHESU commenced a nationwide strike action to press on the government to fulfil it promises on issues relating to implementation of collective bargaining agreement, full implementation of judgement and implementation of outstanding demands.
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