Doctors, govt resume talks as doctors return to work
Negotiations between the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) and the ministries of Employment and Labour Relations and Health on the conditions of service for public sector doctors resumed yesterday.
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The Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) is mediating between the parties involved in the labour dispute.
The meeting was held behind closed doors and the parties are tight-lipped because they have resolved not to release any information until all the sticky issues in the negotiations have been resolved.
Before the negotiations resumed, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, had underscored the need for the stakeholders to be mindful of the fact that they could not get everything they were asking for.
So far, he said, 12 chapters of the proposed conditions of service had already been negotiated and he was hopeful that the remaining issues would be dealt with expeditiously.
The GMA resumed work after going on strike for 24 days in demands for conditions of service for public-sector doctors and other health professionals.
According to the President of the GMA, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, the doctors were going back to the negotiating table in good faith, a condition which Mr Iddrisu had also agreed to.
Negotiating with good faith, both agreed, meant that documents on the negotiations and discussions would not be made public.
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Also the negotiations, they agreed, would be without recourse to the past weeks’ happenings, during which acrimony and mistrust took centre stage in the negotiations.
Mr Iddrisu urged members of the GMA to take into consideration the constraints of the economy.
He said the government remained committed to the principle of giving the doctors coded conditions of service.