Let our demands on national purse be moderate

It’s a relief to see that the head-butting between the government and members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has come to an end, with a call by the leadership of the GMA on its members to resume work today.

The decision to call off the strike was taken after an executive council meeting of the association last Friday.

The doctors were demanding a signed document detailing a number of entitlements to be given to them as part of their conditions of service.

Their proposal was leaked to the public and the citizens had a bite of the cherry, with some condemning the doctors for making outrageous demands, while others blamed the government for taking an entrenched position.

Others simply asked the government to give in to the doctors’ demand to enable them to resume duty to save lives.

In the midst of the strike, the President insisted he would not authorise payment for an unbudgeted amount of money.

The Daily Graphic views the end to the strike as an early test of the government's ability to hold on to fiscal discipline to restore economic stability and we hope it will uphold this principle even in election year next year.

It is our humble view that disagreements are best resolved at the negotiating table and that in every negotiation playing to the gallery does not help matters; it only shows who is wittier.

Both the government and the GMA must also know that taking entrenched positions on matters such as this does not further the progress of the negotiations.

We, therefore, wish to caution that as the two parties reopen talks on documented conditions of service for doctors, each party must be willing to relinquish a bit of its right in order to accommodate the other. That is the essence of negotiations.

The resumption of work by the doctors provide an avenue to alleviate pressure on the government, which is at pains to maintain fiscal discipline four months into a three-year IMF programme that also aims to jump-start growth that has slowed sharply in the last 18 months.

For years Ghana was one of Africa's economic stars due to its exports of cocoa, gold and oil, but the government ran into fiscal trouble in 2012, in part because of spending on public sector wages and a fall in commodity prices.

Now that the GMA and the government have resumed negotiations without a gun on each other’s head, we urge both parties to expedite the process and bring some sanity into the health labour front.

We also urge the government to try and iron out the differences between it and other labour unions to restore industrial harmony in the country.