LOOMING STRIKE: NEVER DREAM NURSES SOLIDARITY AND SUPPORT, UGONSA WARNS JOHESU

The University Graduates of Nursing Science Association (UGONSA) has said that the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) Should not dream Nurses solidarity and support in the looming Nationwide strike.

In a statement, Thursday, by its National President, Chief (Hon.) Solomon E.O. Egwuenu and National Secretary, Nurse Goodluck I. Nshi, the association said that JOHESU had not learnt from its past irresponsible demeanor that provoked UGONSA into calling off the solidarity of its members during its previous industrial actions.

The statement read: “The purported list of JOHESU’s demands that itemized enhanced entry point placements for Medical Laboratory Scientists and Radiographers, to the exclusion of the graduate nurses, that suffer a similar fate, shows that JOHESU is yet to learn from its past mistakes.

“We wonder why JOHESU thinks it will enlist overwhelming solidarity from all segments of nurses when it displays a divisive and parochial tactic of using nurses’ numerical strength to selectively pursue a narrow agenda that will only favour other professions at the expense of the nursing profession.

“Everybody in JOHESU knows that graduate nurses are not only battling the issue of enhanced entry point placement on CONHESS 08 for internship and CONHESS 09 post-NYSC, at the moment, but also the impunity of CMDs in violating extant circulars as a good number of them still appoint graduate nurses on CONHESS 07 against the currently prescribed CONHESS 08 post-NYSC.

“We expected that, having shot itself in the foot in the past, JOHESU would have by now amended its ways to be all-inclusive in the handling of affairs of all the professions under its umbrella. But this seems to not be the case.

“It is on record that JOHESU never supported our struggle for internship yet we successfully achieved it on our own. If they have also decided not to identify with us in our current struggle for proper placement there is no cause for alarm because, like the internship, proper placement is not beyond our capacity to achieve. However, they should not dream of nurses’ solidarity and support because we shall mobilize nurses to jettison whatever flowery antics they may use as bait to lure them into strikes that will not benefit their profession. After all reciprocity is the dynamics of diplomacy.

“We want to put it on record that graduate nurses have no problem with the coalition, but have every problem with the irrationality of perennially having their concerns excluded from what JOHESU presents to the government.

“While the weight advantage of nurses is being used to get the attention of the government, one would expect that nurses’ demands would always be on the front burner of JOHESU’s demands. But the situation is so precarious that nurses’ specific demands, especially those that have direct bearing with graduate nurses, are not accommodated at all; not even at the bottom of its list of demands!

“We believe that we are doubly armoured when we fight together; we believe in teamwork and have strong faith in team spirit and solidarity. But when issues of concern to nurses are treated with levity and disdain, the latitude of elaboration of our solidarity is stifled as solidarity can only be sufficiently elaborated under an atmosphere of equity, justice and inclusiveness.

For the umpteenth time, we call on JOHESU to be reasonable and realize that nurses are inalienable stakeholders in its project. As much as we do not wish that what happened in the past repeats itself, we shall have no other alternative than to withhold our solidarity and fight our battles alone if our specific problems as enumerated are overlooked and trivialized as usual- the statement said.