The government has rejected Nana Akufo-Addo’s call on President Mills to intervene directly in the strike by doctors to get them back to work.
At a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, the NPP’s flag-bearer said the strike, which is running into a week, would have been curtailed had President Mills exerted his influence and made direct appeals to the doctors who are unhappy with the slow-paced single spine salary structure(SSSS) placement.
Later in an interview on Joy FM’s Top Story NPP’s Director of Communications, Nana Akomea reiterated the hope that such an action from the president “could get the doctors to work … he making a direct appeal to the doctors face-to-face and he ordering his ministers to go back to the negotiating table with urgency would or should do the trick because life is at stake”.
But Baba Jamal, a deputy Minister of Information reminded them that President Mills had already made a public appeal to them to return to work, adding that a direct meeting with the doctors, as suggested, would “not solve the problem” or yield any positive result.
He indicated that the gesture would as well be needless because the president is not a technical man, explaining why he has therefore entrusted that responsibility to competent technical men to handle the issue with the doctors.
Mr Jamal said the issue at stake now is not necessarily about money, but placing people on the right structure to commensurate with the work they do.
The deputy minister also chided the opposition NPP for sidestepping the real issue and making political capital out of the strike.
“They (the NPP) instituted it (single spine), and of course if you instituted a policy, there is the need for you to put the proper structures on the ground for it to take off properly. So if they didn’t do that and we have come and have committed ourselves to it, and we are implementing it, I think that they should rather commend us.”
Mr Jamal however assured that the government is committed to ensuring that the new pay policy, that is bedeviled with a myriad of challenges, is implemented satisfactorily.
However, the Communications Director of the NPP, Nana Akomea, maintained that government’s disregard for good faith, has been a major contributing factor to the nationwide strike action embarked upon by the doctors.
“It doesn’t look like the government has shown the best of good faith... We are talking about bad faith and incompetence, the government’s own calculation shows that they required GH¢5.3 billion, however in the budget they put in GH¢3.9 billion.
“Why do you require GH¢5.3 billion by your own calculation and you put in GH¢3.9 billion. So immediately you have built in failure.”
Nana Akomea said the strike was not out of the blue, noting that the doctors had sent signals months ago, but the government did not see the urgency to address their concerns.
He maintained that doctors by their training value human life, and do not go on strike anyhow, and “if they go on strike, it means there is something terribly wrong.”
Story by Isaac Essel/Joy Online
http://politics.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201110/74653.php
No comments:
Post a Comment