By Yusuf Adua
The Government of Nigeria has allocated N1 billion for the payment of death benefits to families of deceased doctors and health workers, while N4.3 billion was closeted in the 2021 budget for the Residency Training Fund.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige made this disclosure adding that the federal government had already commenced payment to these categories of people under the Group Life Insurance.
The minister after having a meeting with the Federal Government representatives and the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), on how the unending crisis in the health sector would be eliminated, told newsmen that evidence of payment was tendered by the office of the Head of Service of the Federation to show that insurance companies had started paying.
“Over N1 billion is on for payment as death benefits. Evidence has been tendered about those who have received the cheques. And so, we are happy that something has been done in that direction in health institutions. This is apart from what happens in other government establishments covered by this life insurance”, he disclosed.
On the Residency Training Fund which is supposed to be in the 2021 budget, Senator Ngige revealed that the Budget Office of the Federation had also tendered evidence to show that the N4.3 billion due to them was captured under the personnel costs in service wide votes.
He added that work was in progress for those who were migrating from the GFMIS platform to IPPIS and that the budget and IPPIS offices were given about 30 days to conclude all the outstanding issues.
He unclothed the constitution of a committee to look into the issue of tertiary institutions that are not adhering to the abolition of bench fees.
To the minister, bench fees were fees paid by residents to institutions where they had gone to acquire training that is not available in their original training institutions. The resident doctors had claimed that some training hospitals like Lagos University Teaching Hospital and University College Ibadan were not adhering to that agreement and a special committee had been set up under the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health to look into it while the Chairman of the Committee of CMD’s, Prof. Jaf Momoh who is the CMD of National Hospital Abuja, would assist him in that task.
“We hope that the matter will be sorted out in two weeks”, he wished.
“With all these and others like consequential minimum wage salary adjustment arrears being taken care of, we hope that the National Executive Committee (NEC) of NARD which is billed to meet sometime next week will be happy and then, encourage their officers to dialogue”.
The minister however admonished the resident doctors to shun any thought of strike and live constructively with the ” work in progress” with more understanding with the better part they have shown.