By ABDULWAHAB ABDULAH & CHIOMA OBINNA
IKEJA — The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, has offered to mediate in the face-off between striking doctors in public hospitals in Lagos State and the state government.

Lagos chapter of NBA, yesterday, after its meeting, constituted a committee to resolve the impasse between the government and the doctors.

The eight-man committee, headed by Chief Gabriel Ajayi, SAN, is  to, among others, schedule a meeting with the parties and resolve the issues as well as ensure that Lagosians do not suffer unduly due to the strike.

Chairman the branch, Mr. Taiwo Taiwo, said the lawyers felt it was part of their duty to resolve the crisis.

He said: “The branch believes that it was better to play a mediation role between the parties in order to find a solution to the problem in the interest of the poor people of Lagos State who obviously will suffer more than any other person in the state.”

Health Workers’ Forum tasks govt

Meantime, as the face-off between the doctors and the government lingers, health workers under the auspices of Health Workers’ Forum, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, yesterday, advised the government to meet their demands to avert incessant strike in the state’s healthcare system.

The forum is the umbrella body for Medical and Health Workers Union, MHWUN, Nigerian Union of Pharmacists, Medical Technologists and Professionals Allied to Medicine, NUPTAM.

Others are National Association of Nurses and Midwives in Nigeria and Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria.

Chairman of the forum, Mr. Rasheed Bamishe, who gave the advise after the workers’ congress in Lagos, blamed incessant strikes on the attitude of the state government to meeting workers’ demands.

He said the forum had written to the government twice on some issues without any response, noting that the government should learn to meet their demands to avert industrial action.

He lamented that the new minimum wage for state health workers, which took effect in January 2011, was not favourable to them as a lot of their benefits had been cut off.

He said: “We are not pleased with what has come with the implementation of the new minimum wage as all of us have been returned to either Step 1 or 2 and rather than the steps ending at 15, it now ends at 12.

“This has never happened before and no other state apart from Lagos is experiencing this. This will in turn affect our gratuity as this is determined by the amount you earn and, therefore, with these discrepancies, our gratuity would be short-changed and our annual increment during years of service would also be automatically lost.”