Hopes that the National Labour Commission could secure a truce and bring an end to the nearly two weeks strike by doctors seems to be dashed, after an arbitration to resolve the impasse on Wednesday was rescheduled.
The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has been at loggerheads with the Fair Wages and Salary Commission (FWSC) over the former’s migration onto the single spine salary structure, which culminated into the strike.
After months of stalled negotiations between the two parties, the National Labour Commission convened a “compulsory arbitration” meeting on Monday but the meeting was suspended to allow the GMA and FWSC to go back to the negotiation table and report back to the NLC on Wednesday.
It was hopeful that the next arbitration meeting could give a clear-cut idea when the strike action would come to an end, but the meeting was rescheduled for Monday October 24, 2011.
Meanwhile, the Council of State on Wednesday held a meeting with the GMA to iron out some issues, and the meeting has been described as “largely productive” by the General Secretary of the GMA, Dr. Sodzi Sodzi Tetteh.
“It offers the opportunity to explain some of the challenges we have had along the way; it offered the council an opportunity as well to appeal to us to consider a broad range of alternatives that we could pursue,” he told Dzifa Bampoh on Top Story.
Though he would not go public with the outcome of the meeting, Dr Tetteh said the council was not happy with the tone of both GMA and FWSC, and “pledged to do follow to bring the issue to a closure”.
He would also not give a hint as to when his colleagues would call off the strike, only to say that in due course, the council of the GMA would meet to decide its next line of action, after they have pondered on calls by various respectable groups to end their strike.
Dr Sodzi Sodzi Tetteh noted that parallel processes are ongoing to solve the issue, and also ruled out any “stubbornness” on the part of the doctors.
“The GMA is not even particularly demanding money per sey, and we are simply not asking that everything should be addressed at a go; but we need to be made sure that the way the problems are going to be addressed is well understood and well outlined.”
A member of the Council of State Rev. Amoo-Darko told Joy News it is the prayer and hope of the council that things will change for the better.
“It is the hard cry of every Ghanaian that these doctors will reconsider their position, and go back to work whilst we talk.”
Nevertheless, Mr Ben Agbai, a labour analyst, was very optimistic the compulsory arbitration would solve the strike crisis.
He explained to Joy FM that with the arbitration, both parties would be compelled to waive their right in order for them to negotiate the issue at stake.
“Some of us have been frustrated and disheartened about the turn of event in Ghana, not only with the doctors’ strike but also [the] contagious nature of strike in our industrial relations environment,” Mr Agbai noted.
Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana
http://lifestyle.myjoyonline.com/pages/health/201110/75063.php
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