UPDATE: GMA extends strike deadline to July 29
After a marathon meeting of its General Assembly in Accra yesterday, the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has decided to push its planned gradual withdrawal of its services to July 29, 2015.
Advertisement
The planned withdrawal of services at the end of June was in respect to the absence of conditions of service for members of the GMA working with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and all agencies and facilities under it.
The Spokesman and Deputy General Secretary of the GMA, Dr Justice Duffu Yankson, who spoke to journalists on the outcome of the meeting that lasted over three and a half hours, said the decision to push the date forward was in recognition of the efforts by both parties (the government and the GMA) in the ongoing negotiations.
He said the GMA suspended the ongoing negotiations to convene its last general meeting on the matter, after which it would return to the negotiating table today (Tuesday, June 30).
“Based on all that has happened in terms of negotiations, the good faith and all that has been shown by both parties and the fact that we also started negotiations this morning, together with the ground rules that we’ve all agreed to work with, the general assembly has decided that our Takoradi deadline be moved forward by a month, specifically up to July 29, 2015.
“Within that period, we expect the employer to conclude, in detail, all the provisions that ought to be in the conditions of service document and have it properly signed,” Dr Yankson said.
Stages of withdrawal
He stated that the implementation of the Takoradi decision would begin with a withdrawal of OPD services for one week, followed by OPD and emergency services in the second week, while in the third week “there will be a total withdrawal, culminating in the final implementation of the Takoradi decision”.
Dr Yankson said the government, which was the employer, and the GMA had agreed on a maximum of one month to work on the conditions of service for doctors in the government’s employment.
He also stated that there was no framework document that was binding on anybody, adding, “What really binds us are the negotiated and signed conditions of service that are peculiar to the medical association and its members.”
He explained that the GMA would only sign its conditions of service as medical doctors and that the provisions would only apply to them as medical doctors.
“Under the current dispensation, our collective bargaining arrangement is such that I cannot go and negotiate on behalf of any other union,” he stated.
The GMA threat
At the end of its third national executive council (NEC) meeting in Cape Coast early this month, the GMA renewed its threat made at an earlier meeting in Takoradi to embark on an industrial action if its members were not given negotiated and signed conditions of service by the end of June 2015.
The association said it would hold the government to its promise to ensure that its members working with the MoH through the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the teaching hospitals were provided with conditions of service.
Currently, doctors working for the state do not enjoy conditions of service.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the Cape Coast meeting, the GMA said it drew the government’s attention to the absence of conditions of service for its members in November 2014.
According to the GMA, the meeting also set the June 30, 2015 deadline to embark on a nationwide strike if that was not corrected, which the government accepted.
Writer’s email: [email protected]
