- Fed Govt says not workable, counters existing laws
Those seeking to stop doctors from seeking greener pastures outside the shores of Nigeria lost the battle yesterday. The Federal Government objected to a bill proposing an amendment to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) Act.
The bill, before the House of Representatives, is to curb the brain drain.
The government position was disclosed by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, while reacting to the threat by members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) to embark on a five-day warning strike.
The association served a notice to begin the warning strike tomorrow over issues bordering on their welfare, including the alleged plan to bar them from obtaining practicing license for five years after qualifying as doctors.
Read Also : Creating greener pastures for doctors at home
House of Representatives member Ganiyu Johnson (representing Oshodi/Isolo II Federal Constituency) is sponsoring the bill labeled “A Bill for an Act to Amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act, Cap. M379, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.”
The bill aimed “to mandate any Nigeria-trained medical or dental practitioner to practice in Nigeria for a minimum of five years before being granted a full license by the Council in order to make quality health services available to Nigerians; and for related matters (H B.2130).”
But responding to a question on the warning strike, after an extraordinary Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Ngige said the bill will go against extant Labour laws, adding that he did not support and will not support it.
He said: “Nobody can say they (doctors) will not get a practising licence till after five years. It will run counter to the laws of the land that have established the progression in the practice of medicine.
“I am a medical doctor. When you graduate from the medical school, you go on one year apprenticeship called housemanship or internship as the case maybe.
“After your internship, you are now given a full licence because prior to that, what you have is a provisional licence of registration with the Nigerian Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN).
“So, after that intensive training, you were signed off by consultants and you became a fully qualified medical doctor to attend to human beings and to work without any supervision again. Supervision then is voluntary.
“Resident doctors are those who have that full licence and they want to acquire post-graduate specialty as surgeons, gynecologists, obstetrics, paediatrics and internal medicine of family medicine. So, they are doctors in training.”
The bill, being sponsored privately, cannot stop anybody from getting a full licence.
The minister said: “That document is as far as I am concerned not workable. Ab initio, I don’t support it and I will never support it. Like I said before, it is like killing a fly with a sledge hammer.
“They should think of other ways if they are trying to check brain drain, there should be other ways. If a doctor has read on scholarship, you bond him, if a doctor has read on bursary you can bond him.
“If a doctor is trained, like we are doing now, on little or nothing which is like scholarship again because N50, 000 a session per medical student is nothing when their counterparts overseas pay 70,000 pounds for a session. So, I don’t support that bill but can bond them if you want.”
Ngige described the planned strike as unnecessary since government was already engaging the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), the NARD’s umbrella body.
He said: “On the demand for 200 per cent salary increase, the NMA is the father of all doctors and they have about four or five affiliates of which the resident doctors is an association affiliating there.
“You have the Medical and Dental Consultants Association (MDCAN), they are the consultants who are training these medical doctors to become specialists. You also have general medical practitioners association and you also have doctors working in the private sector
“So, NMA is discussing with the federal ministry of health, salaries income and wages commission and the Ministry of Labour and we know that NMA has accepted a salary increase between 25 and 30 per cent across board for their members.
“I have called the NMA President to contact them because on the issue of remuneration negotiation, it’s NMA that the government deals with. So, I have told the President of NMA to contact them and we will engage them. They should not go on any strike, it’s not necessary.”
The FEC at yesterday’s extraordinary session approved the Universal Implementation of the Employee Compensation Act (ECA) 2010 following a memorandum presented by Ngige’s ministry.
According to the minister, the law is operated by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), adding that it is a replacement of the old Employee Compensation Act that was known as “Workmen Compensation”.
“The Act provides that the worker who is injured or had an accident or contacted a disease or disabled or dead in the course of work, should be compensated, remunerated and even the family, pay something when the man is no longer there. It didn’t make provision for some of the children to be schooled or educated, up to the age of 21.
“So, today is a good day for the Nigerian workers because the decent work agenda that is contained in Convention102 of the ILO has a major branch on what they call workers’ protection in the course of work.”