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The committee put together by the government to look into the conditions of service of public sector doctors is to present a report to the ministers of Health and Employment and Labour Relations in Accra today.

The committee, chaired by the President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, will present its final report that will spell out the conditions under which doctors will work in the country.

Doctors and health practitioners in the public sector have been working for years without any conditions of service.

The only benefit they get from their work is a two week mortuary service when they die.

To ensure that doctors have conditions of service, the GMA, in 2014, gave a deadline of June 30, 2015 to the government to ensure that doctors in the public sector have a negotiated and signed conditions of service document.

At a news conference in Cape Coast last Sunday, the GMA reiterated its call on the government, threatening an industrial action in July if its members’ conditions of service were not negotiated and signed by the end of June.

It accused the government of failing to provide the terms and conditions of service, more than four months after the association had made the demand.

Update

In a communique issued at the end of the 56th Annual General Conference of the GMA in Takoradi on November 9, 2014, the association had drawn 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.

A deadline of June 30, 2015 was given to the government to ensure that doctors in the public sector had a negotiated and signed conditions of service document.

The GMA, in that communiqué, had indicated that if by the end of the deadline the conditions of service document was not secured, all the affected doctors would consider themselves unemployed.

In a press statement issued at the end of the second National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the GMA held in Ejisu in the Ashanti Region on March 20, 2015, the association indicated that it was going to adhere strictly to the June 30, 2015 deadline because the government had not taken any steps to resolve the issue of lack of conditions of service for its members, four months after serving the initial notice.

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, had, on different occasions, assured the GMA that the government was working round the clock to address its concerns.