By Ahmed Idris
The federal government has begun moves to stop doctors in public service from private practice, Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said yesterday.
The minister said this on Wednesday in Abuja while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
“Council has 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 the law of the land states 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,” he said.
The minister said government has set up a committee to carry out a comprehensive job evaluation in order to determine what exactly an individual should be paid in a way that salaries will be paid appropriately across board in the entire country.
According to him, the committee would look extensively into the issue to enable government resolve what the laws state and what the professional law states.
He said: “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.
“Council also looked at the issue of residency training programme and decided that the training should last for a fixed time of seven years after which individuals should exit from the programme so that other people can come into the programme.”
