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21.09.2004 General News

Chaotic scene at Korle Bu

21.09.2004 LISTEN
By Joy

Striking Nurses At Korle Bu Violently Prevent Colleagues From Attending To Patients There was a chaotic scene at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital on Tuesday when a group of striking nurses at the hospital prevented their other colleagues from attending to patients.

The striking nurses numbering over two hundred, holding sticks and other cudgels moved from ward to ward seizing equipment of their colleagues at post to prevent them from attending to the swarm of patients that had visited the hospital.

The nurses embarked on a strike action yesterday to back their demand for an increment in their Additional Duty Hour Allowance (ADHA).

The nurses are demanding the implementation of a technical committee's report that suggested how best the ADHA should be calculated.

The government says it cannot implement the report because there are defects but the nurses insist the report must be implemented.

The Greater Accra branch of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) has embarked upon the strike action but there are reports that other nurses in other regions have joined the action.

The group of nurses at Korle Bu decided to go round to ensure that the strike action is been enforced in all the wards of the hospital.

Not even an intervention by the Greater Accra regional chairperson of the GRNA could retrain the nurses from preventing their colleagues to work.

They simply defied Mrs. Mary Ann Sackeyfio's orders and went ahead with the action.

Mrs Sakeyfio told JoyNews that the nurses' action was as a result of the health minister's lack of appreciation for the issues being raised by the nurses.

She said the minister's refusal to address the nurses on Monday when the strike begun at a general meeting sparked off the industrial action.

According to her the minister is playing politics with the issue of the distribution of the ADHA since some health workers are paid more than others.

“He is the problem. He is simply refusing to appreciate the problems. We want him to come and meet the nurses and address them so that they would have a first hand information of the issues at stake”, she said.

She told JoyNews that the nurses are bent on carrying out the strike action until the minister of health, Kwaku Owusu Afriyie meets them personally.

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