The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors has condemned the Federal Government’s threat to remove seven days’ pay from doctors’ wages if they go on strike to demand the release of a colleague kidnapped in December 2023.<\/p>\n
Dr. Kefas Wida, Vice President II of NARD and Chairman of the NARD Medical Education Committee, told The PUNCH on Sunday that the salary deduction threat has not deterred doctors.<\/p>\n
The resident doctors recently staged a seven-day warning strike to seek the release of their colleague, Dr. Ganiyat Popoola, who was kidnapped nearly nine months ago at the National Eye Centre in Kaduna.<\/p>\n
In reaction, the federal government expressed unhappiness with the doctors’ choice, stating that they would lose seven days of income.<\/p>\n
In an interview with our correspondent on Sunday, Wida, a NARD leader, stated, “As you all know what we stand for, we don’t blink when it comes to what we pursue, and we are not compromising. If removing from our wage will result in the return of our colleague, which was the reason we went on strike, we regard this as the least sacrifice we can make to assure our colleague’s return. Because, for us, what is the total salary for our colleague’s life? We don’t consider that important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe life of our colleague is more important than the amount of money they are going to remove from the salaries of the doctors. Is this demand too much to ask for the life of somebody who is in agony and daily pain because she is a doctor?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you can see how insensitive this government is. Instead of addressing the main issue, they are trying to see how they can threaten us with the \u2018no work, no pay\u2019 policy. But I can assure you, our members don\u2019t care. At the end of the day, if that can be done, then we can succeed in bringing back our colleague. We are far more satisfied than having our salary removed and having our colleague back. It is not something that we would have any regret for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wida stated that the association will not back down from its demand.<\/p>\n
“We were aware of the government’s threats prior to going on strike.” We are ready to pursue all of our demands,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors has condemned the Federal Government’s threat to remove seven days’ pay from doctors’ wages if they go on strike to demand the release of a colleague kidnapped in December 2023. Dr. Kefas Wida, Vice President II of NARD and Chairman of the NARD Medical Education Committee, told The PUNCH […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":43407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-48718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48718"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48741,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48718\/revisions\/48741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}