Dissenting doctors tell Serebour to resign alone

Some dissenting medical Doctors are challenging Dr. Frank Serebour and some doctors taking a hard-line stance in the ongoing impasse with the government over conditions of service to resign individually if they wish to.

Some doctors such as Dr. Thomas Anaba, have warned Dr. Serebour and his hardliner colleagues from dragging them all into the strange decision to resign en-masse if the government do not meet their demands for improved conditions.

Dr. Anaba is the Chief Executive Officer of Hannah Health Centre and the head of Anaesthesiology Department at the University of Development Studies medical school. In an interview with Radio Gold on Monday, Dr. Anaba charged that Dr. Serebour cannot force the mass resignation on Medical doctors because some of them are against the idea. For his threatening the government with mass resignation if conditions of service demands are not met amounts to blackmail.

The Doctors who have embarked on an indefinite strike over what they describe as poor conditions of service, have threatened to resign from their employments en-masse, if the government failed not meet a list of proposals for improvements in their conditions of service.

Some of the proposals which have been described by critics as outrageous have been met with insults from Dr. Serebour who described critics to their demands as “Idiots”. He fired at Government communicators who vented their opinions that doctors were taking the country to ransom.

Dr. Serebour refused when asked to apologize for the rather strong language, saying he did not regret his caustic response to the communicators.

“I won’t retract them…I have not regretted…I think that at a point in time you have to let people know that you can also get to that level. So I’m not ready to retract. I have not regretted the insults I hurled on him,” he was quoted widely in the media on Monday.

“We need to let them (government communicators) know that we can equally respond in their language, but we restrain ourselves because we respect ourselves,” he said.

Already, the doctor’s strike has resulted in a number of deaths in some hospitals in the country including the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital where three people have officially been reported dead due to the absence of medical personnel.

The Republic can confirm that at Korle Bu, there was no doctor to attend to the health care needs of the patients when they were brought to the Out Patient Department (OPD) of the hospital over the weekend.

The three were said to have given up the ghost few hours after they were brought to the OPD with various health conditions.

The doctors have boycotted consulting services in protest over the absence of favourable conditions of service in their occupation.

Leaked documents outline some of their demands as follows: 40% of basic salaries as accommodation allowance per month; 20 percent as core duty facilitation allowance; 30% clothing allowance; 20% maintenance allowance; 20% utility allowance; 50% as professional allowance and 25% special risk allowance and vehicle tax exemption to doctors.

The proposal has been condemned severally as outrageous; a criticism that has further hardened the doctors’ resolves to stay away from work.

A planned meeting with government officials and stakeholders to negotiate and agree on a roadmap for comprehensive conditions of service document ended in a deadlock as doctors remained adamant to their proposals.

Dr. Serebour said that insults were not the “bona fide” property of the NDC although they treated them us such, not expecting to be responded to when they intimidate others.