KATH doctors strike: Government must be proactive - Lecturer

A Senior Lecturer at the Department of the University of Ghana Dr. Patience Abor, is asking government to be proactive in dealing with issues that undermine the ability of health workers to deliver quality health care.

“We can’t reverse the lives lost during strikes, so when it comes to health service providers, their issues should be prioritized”, she said.

Dr. Patience Abor, speaking on the Morning Xpress on Radio XYZ, expressed worry about the one year delay in paying the two months’ salary arrears of junior doctors on housemanship at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).

The doctors were asked to commence work in September 2016 when KATH was in urgent need of doctors with the belief that the requisite financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance, through the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD), would ask them to start the Housemanship in September 2016.

They started the work hoping the hospital would facilitate their financial clearance from the Ministry but the payments for September and October have not been made and the CAGD is currently saying it needs approval from the Ministry of Finance to do so.

Junior Doctors of KATH have threatened a strike action if they are not provided with a document of evidence promising the payment of their two months’ salary arrears.

In order to prevent a recurrence, Dr Abor is suggesting that the government begins arrangements to pay doctors from their final year in school, so funds are available in time to pay them once they start their housemanship and become eligible for salary payment. She also bemoaned the bureaucracy in the public sector saying it is ‘colonial’ and not in the best interest of the country.

She was expecting the Komfo Anokye hospital to be “innovative in dealing with the issue by arranging for an allowance for the doctors while they work on the clearance from the Ministry of Finance.”

She also said the emotional wellbeing of the doctors is at stake if they have to go through stress to receive monies due them in their early years of the profession. She concluded by saying that such stress could affect the quality of health care they deliver.