Religious groups meet Ghana Medical Association on strike action
Religious groups are meeting members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to endeavour to seek the return of the striking doctors, whose action has entered the tenth day, to work.
The team is led by Right Reverend Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra Archdioceses of the Catholic Church and Maulvi Wahab Adam, Head of the Ahamadiyya Mission are on a fact finding mission.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Monday, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, Vice President of GMA said the Association still stood by its words and ever ready for negotiation by the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC).
He said until FWSC called for fresh negotiation, the compulsory arbitration as provided under Section 162 of the Labour Act, which was being used against them, would not hold.
Dr Opoku-Adusei described Mr Haruna Iddrissu, Acting Minister of Health’s statement of looking for a bondage system over the week-end as a wild goose chase.
He called for dialogue that would rather find a lasting solution to the striking problem and not wrangling and signing of bonds.
The GMA Vice President suggested that the right way was for the Government to set up a committee to look into their problems and find a lasting solution rather than engage in “legalities”.
During a visit to Ridge Hospital, the GNA saw nurses at the Out Patients Department (OPD) virtually idle but attending to in-patients.
The story was not different at the maternity, children’s ward, eye and accident wards but some doctors who spoke on anonymity said emergency cases were being attended to.
Korle-Bu Polyclinic and the Teaching Hospital had the same story as doctors declined to talk.
The OPDs were virtually empty with a handfull of patients sleeping on the benches.
The GMA on October 7, this year, laid down their tools embarking on a nationwide strike against the inability of the FWSC to provide unequivocal evidence of migration of doctors onto the Single Spine Salary Structure as well as the erasing of distortions made in the grading structures of the Single Spine Pay Structure.
In another development, a well-informed source who participated in the initial negotiations by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for health workers now being used by the FWSC said though the demands by the GMA was to be expected, the source was not surprised since the fundamental issues leading to the strike had not been addressed by government.
“There is the need for the Government to re-start discussions with health workers,” the source added.
It said these discussions should be done separately with the various groups under the MOH all over again since the health sector had a major challenge in the areas of job description, contract of work, conditions of service, ESB and scheme of service which defined programme of basis for progression.
Source: GNA