GMA issues ultimatum to NLC
The Ghana Medical Association has given the National Labour Commission (NLC) a one-month ultimatum to enforce its ruling regarding the payment of conversion difference to members of the association in the public sector.
Advertisement
It said failure to enforce the ruling would compel the GMA to embark on a series of measures it had put in place, including a possible industrial action, effective March 3, 2014 “to press home our demands, since the state institutions are clearly failing or working against our common good per their code”.
This was contained in a February 3, 2014 letter signed by Dr Justice Yankson, Assistant General Secretary of the association, and addressed to the chairman of the NLC.
It said the association was disappointed with the seeming lack of commitment on the part of the NLC to enforce its ruling in the matter of the GMA verses the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) regarding the payment of conversion difference to its members.
“The GMA is highly disappointed at the conduct of both the NLC and the FWSC that had led to the striking out of the NLC’s motion on the subject matter for want of prosecution by an Accra high court on January 31, 2014,” it said.
It said the GMA was of the opinion that the NLC and the FWSC “have evinced a clear intention through their acts of commission and omission to ensure that members of the GMA are denied their rights and/or the NLC has deliberately failed to ensure enforcement of its own ruling”.
That, it explained, was because for almost nine months, a motion of enforcement of the said ruling was not moved by the NLC culminating in same dismissed by the high court at the instance of the FWSC when on January 31,2014, the NLC failed to appear in court to move the motion.
According to the GMA, that situation was grossly “unfair/unacceptable to the GMA, especially when we are reliably informed that the legal teams of NLC and FWSC had earlier agreed to go to court on a later date instead of on January 31, 2014, at the request of the FWSC”.
Other Trending Stories
It said it was also not in tune with the letter and spirit of the Labour Act.
“The GMA believes this conduct by both NLC and FWSC is a calculated attempt to frustrate and deny its members their rights by the two state institutions under the pretext of working through the courts,” it said.
It said the GMA would not allow that to happen and, therefore, urged the NLC to, as a matter of urgency, ensure that the situation was corrected and the case relisted for hearing.