<<Print>>

Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, has assured employees in the health sector that the long-awaited conditions of service would be implemented by the end of June to ensure industrial peace and harmony.

     He said due to the special and critical services that the health sector renders, it was necessary that acceptable conditions of service were put in place to boost morale and protect workers whilst in service.

     The health sector has for the past 18 years worked without any conditions of service peculiar to their job.

       The Employment and Labour Minister gave the assurance at a two-day validation workshop of the final draft of the conditions of service for the health sector in Ghana.

      The workshop attended by all stakeholders will validate the final document, which has taken them more than 10 years to prepare.

      Public Service Commission and the Fair Wages and Salary’s Commission are taking part in the validation to ensure that what would be agreed on in the document would not be overly above what is permissible and ensure that provisions made are justifiable.

        Mr Iddrisu expressed regret that it had taken the sector such a long time to develop the document, adding that the government saw the absence of conditions of service for the health sector as unacceptable anomaly.

      He said the document, after the final validation, would be presented to Cabinet for validation by the end of March and President’s approval for its full implementation by the end of June.

     Mr Iddrisu urged all the agencies in the health sector to support the process so as to put to an end to the industrial unrest among health workers.

     He also advised the health sector to ensure a clean staff list to prevent impersonation and cautioned them that the implementation of the conditions would affect salaries and postings.

      “We will therefore urge you accept postings to the rural areas when the need comes and also refrain from embarking on strikes,” he said.

     Dr Kwaku Agyeman Mensah, the Minister of Health, said the health sector had 90,000 staff on government payroll with 75 different categories of staff.

He said the conditions of service developed would be applied to all agencies of the Ministry and no agency would be allowed to offer anything outside the package provided in the document.

     “If any agency feels that it has to offer anything outside the approved broad conditions of service, it has to apply through the Council or the Board justifying the need for the extra request and the source of payment to the Minister of Health for consideration,” he said.

     Dr Kwasi Asabre, Deputy Director for Human Resource of the Ministry of Health, said the document was diligently put together by all stakeholders both internal and external.

These are the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the National Labour Commission, the Trades Union Congress and the Ghana Employers Association with respect to the conditions of service and CBAs and report back to the management of the various service agencies and constituents.

     He said with the absence of the conditions of service, the health sector was only implementing the bigger framework developed by the Public Service Commission, which did not address the peculiarity of the job description.

     He urged the members to work with due diligence and also to let their deliberations centre on issues which would bring about industrial peace and harmony in the health sector.

     Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, President of the Ghana Medical Association and Mr Stephen Corquaye President of the Government Hospital Pharmacists Association expressed joy that the long-awaited document is at its final stage.

      They both commended the ministers of Health and Employment and Labour Relations for the keen interest shown in seeing to the final implementation of the document.

      They also advised government to ensure that all the bottlenecks, which resulted in them embarking on strike actions, would be removed.