Lagos can’t meet doctors’ demand, says Fashola

BY Jimoh Babatunde &  Daniel Eteghe
Lagos State Governor,  Babatunde Fashola,  Thurday, said that with competing demands from other sectors the state cannot afford to pay the striking doctors what they are asking for.

The Medical Guild, the umbrella body of doctors working in the state’s hospitals, went on strike on February 5 over the refusal of state government to implement the Consolidated Medical Salary Scale.

Speaking with airport correspondents on his return from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Enugu at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos, Fashola said  there are  several areas that needed to be cartered for to ensure a balance in the sector.

He said: “It is not a choice that we do not want to pay. It is the realities that we cannot afford to pay the full sum that they are asking for. After salaries we have to buy drugs; after drugs we have to power medical equipment that keep patients alive.

“After all of that we have to pay security, build roads, and build more schools. We have to provide supply. They are all involved in the process as well and not everybody can really have everything that he wants.“

Governor Fashola, while appealing to the striking doctors to have a rethink, said  it is not a war of who is superior, but that “this is  a war of rationality and reason. And we think that the point has been made.”

He added that, “we have made a compromise, we have increased salaries. Once again, I appeal to them to see themselves as part of the solutions rather than being  the problem.”

It will be recalled that Former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Wednesday advised his successor, Governor Babatunde Fashola, to sack striking medical doctors.

Tinubu  had said that it would be foolhardy for the state government to yield to the demands of the doctors, noting that instead, it should employ new doctors.