From Magnus Eze, Abuja, Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin- Kebbi and Desmond Mgboh, Kano

Hope that the indefinite industrial action called by resident doctors would soon end emerged yesterday, as the Federal Government agreed to release N422, 564,729.34 to settle the accumulated emoluments of house officers serving in Federal Tertiary Health Institutions (FTHIs).

This was one of the highlights of the re-negotiated Memorandum of Settlement agreed between the Federal Government and the striking members of National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).

It was gathered that the National Salaries Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC) had since August 31, made a computation of the financial implications for the House Officers’ Pay from which the N422.5 billion was arrived at.

Meanwhile, the National Executive Council (NEC) of NARD would meet today to review the strike that has entered its fifth day.

It would deliberate on the re-negotiated Memorandum of Terms of Settlement it signed with the Federal Government after about 10-hour meeting on Wednesday.

A copy of the agreement obtained by Daily Sun said NARD would present the outcome of the re-negotiated Memorandum of Terms of Settlement to an emergency meeting of its members “with a view to suspending the strike once there is evidence of payment of the mandate as presented to the meeting, to the affected Federal Tertiary Health Institutions.”

It added: “No member of NARD will be victimised as a result of this strike if suspended, after the Emergency Meeting of Friday, September 8, 2017.”

The conciliation meeting was adjourned to reconvene on November 2, for the parties to review level of implementation.

A source at the meeting told Daily Sun that the deliberations were “quite knotty” and the atmosphere at some periods charged.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, had at the opening session lambasted the doctors for embarking on strike, even after entering a settlement agreement with government on August 31.

He accused them of breaching the tenets of Section 18 of the Trade Dispute Act, Laws of the Federation, which stipulates that none of the parties in a dispute should take further action when conciliation had commenced.

According to the re-negotiated Memorandum of Settlement, it was noted that the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had received one Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) of the sum of N13.2 billion to address the shortfalls in public sector including payment of the salaries of affected doctors in FTHI.

After due considerations by the meeting, especially of the document submitted by NARD on “salary shortfall,” the soothing balm to the striking doctors was a resolution “that the FTHIs on list A of the document submitted by NARD that have been authenticated by OAGF were expected to receive payments on or before Friday, September 8, 2017 as OAGF tendered a mandate containing 8 FTHI and pledged to forward an additional list of the remaining FTHI to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for necessary action between September 7-8, 2017.”

It was also agreed that the second batch (list B) mandate will be treated as soon as their authority to incur expenditure was sent to OAGF since NARD claimed that PICA had verified the shortfalls.

While efforts are on to end the strike, patients have continued to groan. At the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Birnin Kebbi, doctors were seen attending to patients. A patient at the  orthopedic ward, Malam Isha Abdullahi, said many doctors did not partake fully in the strike. His view was collaborated by another patient in the Accident and Emergency ward, Musa Usman.

  The Medical Director, Dr. Abdullhai Ibrahim said most of the incentives being demanded by the union had been captured.

“I have good relationship with my RDs; so they don’t see the need to join the strike,” he said.

But there was a drop in the traffic of patents at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH). Medical workers told Daily Sun that many outpatients had reverted to other public hospitals  which were not on strike. They also said many of the patients on admission had  been discharged by their doctors or had sought referral to other hospitals, leaving only a handful of patients in the wards.

Daily Sun saw patients at the male and female surgical wards being attended to by a handful of student nurses, a staff nurse and a matron.

Alhaji Aminu Inuwas, deputy director, Public Relations, told Daily Sun that in the wake of the strike, the management met with the various heads of departments and fashioned out ways to mitigate  the impact of the strike.

Although he admitted that the absence of the resident doctors had hampered activities, he said  the steps they took had gone a long way tocushion the impact on patients, adding that consultants, other class of doctors and nurses were at their respective duty posts attending to patients.