Our demands are for 2016; GMA explains and says Prez must be properly briefed
The Ghana Medical Association has indicated that its demand for improved conditions of service is meant to be factored into the 2016 budget and not to take immediate effect.
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The President of the association, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, made the clarification in an interview with the Daily Graphic on the sidelines of the inauguration of a water treatment plant for the Tema General Hospital yesterday.
He, therefore, expressed surprise at President John Mahama's declaration that the government would not authorise any expenditure on wages not provided for in the budget for both workers and Article 71 office holders.
He said the GMA was heavily outnumbered by the government team at the negotiating table with government represented by 16 negotiators as against GMA's 10 representatives.
Dr Opoku-Adusei said it behoved the team representing the government to brief the Presidency that whatever agreement was reached would be factored in the 2016 budget and implemented in January 2016 and not take immediate effect.
Addressing members of the Ghana Registered Midwives Association (GRWA) at the launch of their 80th anniversary in Accra last Wednesday, the President observed that the demands by the GMA would adversely affect the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP) and appealed to them tonot derail the gains made to achieve fiscal discipline.
Distortion
"Our basic salary is not part of this negotiation because it is on the single spine and virtually nobody can touch it," Dr Opoku-Adusei, who is also the Medical Director of the Tema General Hospital, said.
He disagreed with the President's position, stressing that "it is not true that doctors are demanding money from government this year.
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Assuming we were, is there anything wrong with it?" he queried.
Bad faith
He said the government had not been faithful to the negotiations by leaking the GMA negotiation proposal to the public, but indicated that the association did not have any regrets that the documents got leaked leading to several condemnation by government communicators and sections of the public.
Dr Opoku-Adusei said the GMA could have also provided a number of documents to back its claim, but chose to abide by the ground rules set out to guide the negotiation hence its surprise at the fact that their negotiation proposals were leaked.
He said there was no country without conditions of service, adding that the proposals being negotiated for now was for the benefit of not just the current crop of doctors but those who would emerge in the future.
Asked whether the association was determined to carry out with the threat to withdraw emergency services, he said whatever decision they take would be communicated to the public, adding that till otherwise, the road map they intended to roll out would continue.
Road map
Meanwhile, the second phase of actions embodied in the road map of the striking doctors to withdraw emergency services takes off from today (Friday) to August 13, 2015, barring any change of mind or heart on the part of members of the GMA, reports Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho.
The road map was drawn by members at an Extraordinary General Meeting on June 29, 2015 in Accra.
The Accra meeting followed a communiqué issued at the end of the 56th Annual General Conference of the GMA on November 9, 2014 in Takoradi in the Western Region.
At the Takoradi conference last year, the GMA drew the attention of the government to the fact that its members working with the Ministry of Health (Ghana Health Service/teaching hospitals) were without conditions of service.
It, therefore, gave a deadline of June 30, 2015 to the government to ensure that doctors in the public sector had a negotiated and signed conditions of service document.
Document
In the communiqué, the GMA indicated that if by the end of the June 30, 2015 deadline the conditions of service document was not secured, all the affected doctors shall consider themselves unemployed thus “resign en bloc”.
On the said date, the government failed to honour the request of the doctors and therefore at the extraordinary meeting in Accra, the GMA after deliberating on the absence of a signed conditions of service document for doctors in the public sector and the June 30, 2015 deadline, decided to move the deadline to 6 p.m. on July 29, 2015.
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If not averted, the strike would climax on August 14, 2015, when the GMA would withdraw total services including in-patient care which would finally culminate in the mass resignation of all members of the GMA working in the public health sector.
Presently, there are 2,064 public service doctors in the country made up of 12 medical directors, 1,295 medical officers, 48 medical officer-consultants, 1,346 medical officer-specialists and 132 medical superintendents.
Writer's email: benjamin.glover@graphic.com.gh and rebecca.quaicoe-duho@graphic.com.gh