Health workers’ strike: FG, JOHESU meet again today

The federal government and the striking Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) will reconvene today in a bid to find a resolution to the strike. This was indicated in a statement by the Ministry of Health yesterday in reaction to an advert sponsored by JOHESU in the Daily Trust Newspaper of Saturday April 28.

The union in the advert accused the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, of denying the existence of an agreement between it and the Nigerian government in 2014.

The ministry, in a statement signed by the Assistant Director of Information, Olajide Oshundun, said the information JOHESU gave in the advert was incorrect and misleading. JOHESU, a union comprising of all health workers in Nigeria apart from medical doctors and dentists, has been on an indefinite strike for 12 days crippling healthcare delivery across federal institutions.

In the statement, the minister said there was no agreement between the government and JOHESU prior to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to him, the federal government is doing everything in its power to resolve the matter.

He explained that what “JOHESU was brandishing as 2014 agreement were minutes of meetings they had with the organs of the federal government.” He added that in September 2017, JOHESU presented 15-point demand

. He said the federal government has implemented 14 out of it while the last demand is still being attended to by the “high level body set up by the government to look into its implementation.” According to the statement, the September 2017 agreement stated that: “The meeting noted that two different figures had been submitted to the National Salaries and Wages Commission on separate occasions.

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