By Hassan Zaggi
The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Adeleke Mamora, has applauded health workers under the umbrella of the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU), for sustaining peace in the health sector.
He gave the commendation during a ceremony to award and honour senators and house of representatives members who are from the JOHESU extraction.
The event was organized by the members of JOHESU, in Abuja, weekend.
The Minister vowed that his ministry will continue to work closely with the JOHESU for the good of the health sector.
He, however, called for constant dialogue and engagement between the health ministry and the JOHESU in order to engender fairness and justice in the health sector.
“Thank you for the relative peace that have pervaded the labour community and of course, that includes JOHESU.
“There has been relative peace in the health sector. For me, it is a function of good leadership by president of the NLC and JOHESU.”
While advocating for constant dialogue, the Minister said: “There will always be room for dialogue because none of us who is in this position has all the answers, the wisdom and knowledge. That is why there has to be continuous engagement and when arguments boil truth will evaporate.
“We have no other country than this, so we must continue to dialogue on our issues and jointly, at the end of the day, agree to toe the path that will be beneficial to all of us.
“We will continue to work with you as partners in progress. We cannot say there wont be conflict, there will always be conflict but we must strive to resolve and obey the principle of fair play and justice.
“The leadership of Federal Ministry of Health will be there to listen to you as much as possible. We will do it together for the good of our people.”
Speaking, the President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Waba, challenged the members of the JOHESU to look inward among themselves and support and sponsor those that have the capacity to represent them at the National Assembly.
“As Joint health sector unions, this should be an eye opener, we should be able to identify good Nigerians that will be able to bring positive change and that have what it takes to represent us, we should support them materially and otherwise.”
He reminded the legislators that Nigeria is bedeviled with huge challenges including that of inequality and inability of citizens to access quality healthcare.
Speaking, the JOHESU President, Josiah Biobelemoye, explained that the event was aimed at bringing together both senators and legislators who are from the JOHESU extraction to familiarize with them.
“After careful search, we discovered that we have 9 distinguished senators and 22 house of representative members who are from the JOHESU extraction.
“We decided that the only way we can bring everybody together and for us not be treated as orphans when we go to the National Assembly is for us to know ourselves and also make the senators and house members know themselves.”
