COVID-19: Reps set up committee on dead frontline healthcare workers

The House of Representatives  has set up a committee to interface with families of healthcare workers who died in the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic for them to receive financial benefits.

The lower legislature also said it would intervene in all pending issues concerning the payment and welfare of health workers in the country.

The chairman, House of Committee on Health Services, Dr Tanko Sununu, stated these during a courtesy visit to the Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria in Abuja.

At the event, the National President of MHWUN, Josiah Biobelemoye, urged the legislative and executive arms of government to prioritise the needs of healthcare workers and warned that the delayed payment of deferred and adjusted salaries was “a ticking time bomb.”

Sununu said the National Assembly was still reviewing the manner of compensation that would be made available to the affected families.

He said, “We are not unmindful of our health workers in the frontline who paid the ultimate price. This is why we are working out a plan to compensate their families.

 “A committee has been set up. We will call for a public hearing where the strategy and method to be used in disbursing the compensations will be agreed on. The families of the deceased will be located and we must ensure the money reaches them.

 “Our aim is to ensure there is no disharmony in the health sector.

We are reaching out to major stakeholders and negotiating their demands to ensure health workers continue with their work with no hitches or grievances.”

Sununu advised the aggrieved frontline workers threatening to embark on strike over government’s unfair treatment, to consider the millions of lives such an action could put at risk.