Official reinstatement letters for the 788 sacked doctors are ready for collection on Monday, hospital officials have said. Following the announcement by the Lagos State Government that the mass dismissal of striking doctors was suspended, the battle weary medical practitioners asked to see it in writing.

In a telephone interview, the Chief Medical Director of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Professor David Oke, said the hospital agreed to hand out recall letters following an hour-long meeting with the state government on Friday.

Oke told the Vanguard that in LASUTH alone some 400 letters, recalling House Officers, Medical Officers, Resident Doctors and Consultants back to the duty posts, were ready and waiting to be picked up.

The LASUTH medical chief said the letters were simply stating a rescind of the prior dismissal and recall to duty at the hospital.

NMA says resume immediately

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, on Saturday directed all doctors within its association to resume work immediately.

President of the NMA, Dr. Osahan Enabulele, who addressed journalists following a five-hour emergency delegates meeting, urged that the doctors, sacked three weeks ago after they embarked on a warning strike deemed illegal by the state, be recalled without “punitive measures”.

They also intent to meet to sort out issues concerning payments in two weeks time, he said. The sacked doctors had embarked on a three-day waring strike in early April, protesting poor payments and the government’s failure to implement the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS).

Though the stand-off over the “illegal” strike is over, there is still the overriding war to deal with, the matter of implementing CONMESS which the government had agreed to do in March 2011.