MINISTER of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige has accused members of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) of violating the tenets of Section 18 of the Trade Dispute Act by embarking on their indefinite strike action.
He said they should have returned to the negotiation table rather than going ahead with the strike.
The Minister also accused the doctors of intimidating their employers, the Federal Ministry of Health, by going ahead with their industrial action after signing a memorandum of terms of settlement with the government and adjourning to allow for implementation of the agreement reached.
Ngige, who spoke at the resume meeting between the government and the leadership of the resident doctors, said the Trade Dispute Act stipulates that once the Minister of Labour has begun conciliation, no party in a dispute can take any action that violates the provisions of the law.
The resident doctors has rejected the memorandum of terms of settlement signed with the government after their meeting last week and began an indefinite strike action to force government to yield to their demand.
The minister told the doctors that the government has already began implementation of the terms of settlement contained in the memorandum which they rejected.
He noted that if they had consulted widely, they would not have embarked on the strike.
Ngige said the strike was not fair to the Federal Ministry of Health, which is the employers of the doctors, as well as his ministry, which is the conciliator in the dispute.
He said: “Even though I am a government minister, I am a chief conciliator. If the government is wrong, I will tell them that they are wrong. If the employees is wrong, I will say so and at the end of the day, we will find a way to conciliate and make for an equitable industrial relations.
“We are all gathered here and the Ministry of Health looks like they are already being short-changed because by Section 18 of the Trade Dispute Act of the Federation, T8, T9, 2004, once a conciliation starts by the minister, no party is allowed to stage a lock-out either for employees by locking them out or embark on strike against the employers.”
He thanked President of NMA for making out time to come, assuring the parties that the areas of dispute will be resolved so that the doctors can go back to work.