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Mrs Francisca Tete-Mensah
Mrs Francisca Tete-Mensah

State attorneys call off strike - Resume work today

State Attorneys in the country will resume work today after calling off their three-month strike.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the President of the Association of State Attorneys (ASA), Mrs Francisca Tete-Mensah, said the attorneys decided to call off the strike due to the personal intervention by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

She said the President met with the executive of the ASA two weeks ago and followed it up with a letter last Friday that gave an assurance to resolve the impasse that led to the strike.

“He has given us a written assurance and, therefore, we are standing on his written assurance. He is the President and so we strongly believe that he will stand by his word,” she said.

“Due to the President’s intervention, we are starting work today. We will also meet with the Attorney-General designate tomorrow for further discussions,’’ she said.

Strike

The state lawyers declared an indefinite strike in October last year as a result of what they described as the government’s inaction in improving their conditions of service, as directed by a National Labour Commission (NLC) arbitration panel in September 2015.

The NLC panel, among other things, called for the harmonisation of the salaries of state attorneys with those of judges of the circuit court and magistrates.

It also called for the migration of the pensions of state attorneys from the old pension scheme to the new three-tier scheme. In terms of the pension, the ASA claimed that a new legislative instrument ought to have been passed to ensure the migration of its members onto the new scheme, but the government had failed to do so.

They also decried the lack of sufficient tools such as computers, printers, legal documents and other supporting items to enable them to perform their duties efficiently.

They also demanded the employment of more lawyers as state attorneys to reduce the situation where a few state lawyers had to work on thousands of cases.

Impasse

The striking state lawyers took an entrenched position not to end the strike after the NLC had threatened them with legal action for resorting to a strike, instead of negotiating for their demands.

Even threats by the Attorney- General that the striking ASA members would lose their salaries and other remuneration if they did not resume work did not compel them to call off the strike.

The strike seriously affected j u s t i c e delivery in the country, as thousands of cases that the state attorneys w e r e p r o s e c u t i n g stalled and had to be adjourned on numerous occasions by the law courts.

Also, numerous case dockets that were sent to the A-G’s Department by police prosecutors for advice got stuck in the department. The situation led to the adjournment of many cases, as the police always claimed they could not continue with cases because they were awaiting the AG’s advice.

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