Workers of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), under the aegis of Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint a substantive director-general for the agency to avert its collapse.
MHWUN chairman at NAFDAC, Comrade Anzaku Peter Joseph, addressed reporters yesterday in Lagos on the plight of the workers.
The union leader regretted that the workers’ grievances, which were tabled before the former Director-General, Dr Paul Orhii, with the intervention of the Minister for Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, were jettisoned by the current administration.
He said the development had paralysed NAFDAC’s activities.
Joseph said the agency’s acting Director-General, Mrs Y. O. Oni, was part of its crisis, which forced the workers to go on strike many times.
Joseph said: “Therefore, she should go on her terminal leave before the agency is plunged into a mess.”
According to him, despite the intervention of the stakeholders on the workers’ plight, the acting director-general refused to follow the minister’s order that she should resolve the internal crisis in the agency and tender a salary structure for the ministry to approve.
Joseph recalled that a letter was sent to the management in which the union gave a week ultimatum for it to address its grievances, “otherwise, the union will embark on an indefinite strike, if that is the only language the management understands”.