Tomorrow will be exactly 21 days since doctors in state hospitals across the country downed their stethoscopes. It would be three solid weeks without medical care in all state hospitals across the country. In any society, it would be a crisis of epic proportions. In Ghana, it is business as usual.
Yesterday, President John Evans Atta Mills was on the streets of Accra, inspecting flooded areas in the company of the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashitey, and the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Dr. Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, whose distinctive beard is one of the political landmarks in the Mills Administration.
While the Head of State was on the walk-about on the chaotic streets of Accra, officials of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) were locked up in a compulsory arbitration with the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) at the offices of the Ghana Labour Commission, near ‘Boom’ junction in the national capital.
Yesterday’s meeting, according to The Chronicle sources, was brief. I am told the Labour Commission read out what was contained in a compulsory arbitration, which required that an organisation submitting itself to arbitration ought to ensure that its officials were at work. In effect, people on compulsory arbitration could not be on strike. The Ghana Medical Association could not have its members abandoning health care, while the association had availed itself of compulsory arbitration.
Copyright, Blaise APLOGAN, 2010,© Bienvenu sur Babilown
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