According to the state chapter of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), it has for the last two years, been pulling strings with the administration of Governor Yari Abubakar who seemed to have defied honoring all the agreements reached at several meetings held between the government and the state leadership of the Midwives' and Nurses' Association, subsequent upon which it embarked on a state-wide strike penultimate Wednesday.
About a week later, the state government announced on radio that it had sacked all the striking members of the association.
According to the state acting secretary of the association, Nasiru Muhammad Moriki, Zamfara state has less than 400 Nurses and Midwives, managing about 25 hospitals across the state, but many are leaving the state due to a very poor salary structure.
He told Leadership Newspapers the crisis between the state government and the association of Nurses and Midwives began in 2009 when the Federal Government approved a new consolidated salary structure for medical Doctors, Nurses and Midwives, following which some states have implemented the scale since 2010.
In 2011, he said the leaders of the association met with the then Administration of former governor Mahmuda Shinkafi which agreed to pay 70 per cent of the approved salary structure but the implementation was just about to begin when the government lost the election to the current administration.
But when the new administration of governor Abdulaziz Yari refused to comply with the agreement, "we resolved to embark on a warning strike in 2012", he said, "but we were persuaded by the state commissioner of Health to suspend the action and exercise some patience, with a pledge that he would intervene, and which we agreed".
Early this year, the association once again decided to resume on the warning strike following the persistent refusal by the government to honour its demands, but that time again the association was persuaded to defer the action on the pretext that a National Quranic recitation competition was holding in the state at that moment.
Since then, the government did not make any official move to avert the looming industrial crisis by the association, and a letter of reminder was sent to the government by the association concerning the issue at stake, but the government came up with the approval of 57 per cent, denying the earlier agreement of 70 per cent, which was refusing considering the fact that the state was losing qualified Nurses and Midwives due to poor salary scale.
The secretary regrets that Zamfara state which ranks among the states with highest mortality rate, was also having the least number of Nurses and Midwives with only 400 managing 25 hospitals, while Kebbi, Katsina, Kaduna, Sokoto and Jigawa had over one thousand, just as all other states record a figure of over 800.
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