<<Print>>President John Dramani Mahama has reiterated his call on doctors in the country to end their “illegal strike” and return to work while negotiations over their working conditions continue. He said “nobody must die because of an illegal strike” over conditions of service that have never existed but are now being negotiated to be institutionalized.
President Mahama was speaking on national broadcaster, GBC’s Uniiq FM Wednesday morning, and said what is lawful is what will be done or the country will plunge into a state of lawlessness.
“Nobody must die because of an illegal strike. The strike is illegal, absolutely illegal,” he pointed out.
President Mahama narrated the journey to the present strike action by doctors that is crippling health delivery nationwide.
“Doctors ask for conditions of service, of course all workers deserve conditions of service. It’s not like it existed and we took it away, it’s the first time it’s being introduced.
It takes a process of negotiation to put those conditions of service in place. Even before negotiation has ended, the GMA has taken several months to draw up their conditions of service and then they give it to government and say here are our demands for conditions of service, we give you up to 29th, if you don’t grant it we are going on strike and they start the strike, even when negotiations are taking place. The Labour Law says that nobody should negotiate under duress. And that is what has led us to where we’ve always come to.”
President Mahama viewed calls to grant the doctors their demands as simplistic, saying it is not just about the striking doctors who are affected by their demands but that a whole lot of other professionals linked to the business of providing health services also come into view relative to the pay structure.
“You have the nurses, you have the midwives, you have the X-Ray technicians, you have the laboratory technicians, you have the pharmacists, you even have the cleaners… We cannot single out one group of the health workers and accede to those demands, then what of the midwives, what of the pharmacists, what of the nurses… and then even when you get out of health care, what of the engineers, what of the architects, and so it’s not as simple as it is.
“And somebody says oh, because doctors are special give in to them, but it’s not about the 2,800 doctors, it’s about another 5,900-and-something who are waiting to see what the linkages are and say… it’s alright we too are demanding this and they can also go on strike and people are dying.”