FG looking “into the issue of private practice by medical doctors in the public sector”

Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole

The federal government has said that it is looking into the issue of medical doctors in public service who are engaging in private practice.

Minister of Health Professor Isaac Adewole made this known in a statement to State House correspondents after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting.

“For us in the health sector, the most important is the need to do comprehensive job evaluation, so government has decided to set up a committee that would evaluate what exactly we do as individuals, how much should we be paid in a way that we can really pay appropriately across board through the entire country

 

“In addition council also considered an important memo on industrial relations particularly in the public sector, that report dealt extensively with several issues but for us the health sector the most important is the need to do comprehensive job evaluation.

So, government has decided to set up a committee that would evaluate what exactly do we do as individuals, how much should we be paid in a way that we can really pay appropriately across board through the entire country.

Council also looked at the issue of residency training programme and decided that the training should last for a fixed time of 7 years after training for 7 years individuals should exit from the programme so that other people can come into the programme.

Council has also decided to look into the issue of private practice by medical doctors in the public sector and a committee has been set up to look extensively into that issue because we want to resolve the issue of what does the law of the land state and what the rule of professional ethics say.

 

The law of the land does not allow any public officer to do anything other than farming, so that committee would make appropriate recommendation to government on this important issues which is of considerable interest to quite a number of Nigerians.

In addition to that, we will also look at the Yayale Ahmed report which tried to look into the relationship between professional groups in the health sector; and the office of the SGF has been mandated to forward a white paper on the Yayale Ahmed report to the FEC so that once and for all government can restore harmony to the health sector,” Adewole said.