Govt working on GMA concerns over absence of service conditions

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, has said the government is working round the clock to address the concerns of public doctors.

He indicated, therefore, that threats by doctors in the public sector to resign if their conditions of service were not reviewed by June 30 was "unnecessary and uncalled for".

The minister was reacting to threats by doctors in the public sector to stage a strike if the government did not come up with their conditions of service by June 30, 2015.

Mr Iddrisu told the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday that the government was committed to concluding conditions of service for all health service workers shortly.

He said that was evidenced by the fact that a committee had been set up, with representation from the GMA, to work on the conditions of service for all health workers.

He expressed concern over the threat by the doctors to go on strike after June 30, this year, particularly so as the threat was issued a day after he had met with them.

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) gave indication of its intention to go on strike after June 30, shortly after its leadership had met with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations in Accra last Wednesday.

And despite the minister’s assurance, the President of the GMA, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, speaking to journalists in Tema yesterday, said its members working in public health facilities would have no option but lay down their tools unless the government resolved issues relating to their conditions of service by June 30, 2015.

Speaking after the inauguration of an Administration Block attached to the Ebola Isolation Centre, Dr Opoku-Adusei said: “Our argument is very simple: since the advent of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in 1996, we have not had any conditions of service document. The little that we have is so scattered.

“When we were employed, we were handed one small sheet which states your name, why you are being employed, your starting salary and where you will end and that is all. All the rest are in small booklets and even some of them do not have any legal backing.” 

Terms/responsibilities

Dr Opoku-Adusei,  who is also the Medical Director of the Tema General Hospital, said the conditions of service document was for employees to know their responsibilities and the government or the state to know its responsibility towards those it had employed.

He said having made several efforts to resolve the issue amicably without success, the GMA had no option but restate its resolve to go on strike by the deadline.

“It is not enough for the government to say that it is working on it. We need to have a document agreed on and signed by both parties.

“We are angry because there was a minister who once asked us why we were working when we did not have a conditions of service document...,” he said.

Ransom

The GMA President disagreed with the assertion that doctors were holding the nation to ransom by threatening a strike, contending that it was rather the state, as an employer, that was holding doctors to ransom. 

“As I speak to you now, there are doctors who have worked for seven months but have not been paid. So who is holding whom to ransom?” he asked.