The press statement, signed by Comrade Ayuba Wabba, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Comrade Quadri Olaleye, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), revealed that at the moment, there are about 300 health workers “exposed or infected with Covid-19.”
Author: National Record
Participants resolved to hold the meeting on “bimonthly basis” with focus of the next meeting being on the impact of covid-19 on the healthcare sector. Towards this theme, national centres were urged to prepare country reports with special focus of government’s initiatives directed at responding to covid-19 that will have general impact on the health sector. OTUWA was also urged to ensure that selected health sector unions in the sub-region are involved in the next meeting.
While noting that though the committee established by the state government to coordinate the fight against COVID-19 has been working round the clock especially in the area of stakeholders’ engagement and other technical approaches; the activities of the committee are however too centralised in the state capital at the expense of other parts of the state.
“We must learn the lessons from the fight against HIV and Swine Flu where the narrow self-interests of corporations and governments meant vaccines and treatments were too expensive or arrived too late. This cost countless lives across the developing world,” Marriott said.
CITAD stated that an independent investigation it carried out indicate that few hospitals in the metropolis are battle ready with the required medical kits. “In Kano alone, our investigation has revealed that few among the hospitals in the state are ready and supplied with necessary equipment.
“We in NASU see the decision to implement the Report as a licence and cover to carry out retrenchment in some sections of the public service and this is not acceptable to the Union. The policy direction, which is ill-timed is another attempt by the advisers and drivers of the policy to pitch the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari against workers and their unions. It is going to bring about job losses and poverty and this is not the time to throw people into the over-saturated unemployment market,” NASU stated emphatically.”
The past five months have been quite a profound period for me. As challenging as that period has been, it has provided me an opportunity to learn invaluable lessons about our country, our peoples, our justice system and the true meaning of love. I mean love for family, love for our country and love for humanity.
A seven-member panel of the apex court in a unanimous verdict on the appeal delivered by Justice Ejembi Eko, declared that the conviction of the appellants was null and void. According to Justice Eko, the declaration was on the ground that Justice Mohammed Idris, who ab initio delivered the judgment sentencing the appellants, was already a Justice of the Court of Appeal, as at the time he delivered the sentence.
According to the union, “the methodology to be applied for the intervention must not be business-as-usual. For, there have been two previous such financial interventions in the aviation sector in recent memory, both of which left much to be desired. In those instances, airlines like Arik Air, Kabo Air (defunct), Air Nigeria (defunct), and many others collected billions of naira supposedly for capital injection into their businesses but were diverted to personal usages, and callously leaving the airlines to bleed to death. The promoters of these airlines then ran away with bloated personal bank accounts and they are walking free till today. Therefore, if the same methodology as before were to be used, then we fear that the same undesirable result will accrue.”
Noting that on-the-ground-assessments have shown that Kano is at the stage of widespread community infection, especially in the densely populated core local government areas of the metropolis – Dala, Municipal and Gwale, the group recommend the need to establish the extent and pattern of the epidemic by rapidly expanding testing and the provision of more testing centres and kits; the provision of more bed spaces for isolation, holding areas and case management of patients and the unified management protocols for all covid-19 patients in the state and the urgent need to procure and deliver of sufficient Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for protection of medical personnel, a significant number of whom had been infected in the early days of the infection in the state.