Health workers withdraw out-patient services from Wednesday

Patients who plan on visiting public hospitals from tomorrow must reconsider their decisions because doctors and other health workers have withdrawn out-patient services.

That is the new instruction to all health workers after an emergency meeting held by members of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and allied groups, Wednesday.

The strike action which was originally announced on Tuesday failed as many of the health workers across the country reported to work.

Dr Frank Serebour, General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) said the strike failed partly because the instruction came rather late and there were no modalities set up.

But with the emergency meeting held today, the doctors, nurses and all other health workers will not report to work from tomorrow until government responds to their grievances.

The health workers together with several other unions announced a joint strike, Tuesday protesting government's handling of their tier II pension schemes.

The unionised bodies are rejecting government's imposition of the Pension Alliance Trust, and also calling on the government to allow the full operationalisation of the Public Sector Pension Scheme, but they are not making any headway in this.

Dr Serebour said as it is, doctors and other health workers who would retire  next year do not know how their pensions would be handled.

On the contrary, he said, politicians, most of whom are Article 71 office holders have an ex-gratia to benefit from four years after they leave power.

He does not understand why a worker who after decades of service to the state would not be treated well.

He said if government fails to address their immediate concerns, they would be forced to scale-up their strike by turning emergency cases as well as services to in-patients.