Korle Bu Staff Up in Arms

Some workers of the nation's premier health facility, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), yesterday embarked on a sit down strike to back home their demands for the payment of their outstanding salary arrears.

This was at a time the hospital's Board, which is chaired by Reverend Professor Seth Ayettey, were locked up in a meeting which took them most part of the day.

The aggrieved workers, which included security personnel, orderlies, mortuary attendants, laboratory assistants, accounts clerks, secretaries and drivers, among a host of others, laid down their tools and staged a demonstration in front of the hospital's administration block, amidst chants of war songs, and shouts of "we want our money."

This was in protest of the non-payment of outstanding salary arrears of the 850 staff of the hospital, who are paid from the hospital's Internally Generated Funds (IGF), which dates back to 18 months ago.

Some of the workers, who spoke to The Chronicle on condition of anonymity for fear of being victimized, could not fathom why the management of the hospital, led by its Chief Executive Officer, Professor Nii Otu-Nartey, had failed to honour the payment of the arrears, though payment is long overdue.

This, they said, was because the management had earlier agreed to commence payment this past August. Hospital sources said the management held two separate meetings with the staff, at which they promised to pay the outstanding arrears in three separate installments.

Under the said agreement, the management promised to make a monthly payment of six months arrears, but had since not fulfilled its part of the agreement, which was reached some weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the appointment letters of some of these staff, indicate that they have been working for the hospital for the past 10-15years without being employed as permanent staff, but casual workers.

Some said when they were employed, they were given reason to believe that they would be made permanent staff after their six months' probation, but at certain point in time, they were served with letters terminating their appointments, and asked to reapply if they so wished.

This rendered ineffective the assurance of making them permanent staff.

They therefore believe this was a deliberate ploy by the management of the hospital to take undue advantage of them, since under normal circumstances it should not take more than a year to regularise staff after serving a probation period of six months.

One of such persons, who spoke to the paper, had this to say, "if they (Korle Bu) can't pay us, they should take as to the Controller." The management of the hospital has since asked the aggrieved workers to submit their appointment letters for scrutiny, since some of them are believed to be using 'ghost names.'

At the time filing this report, the management of the hospital was still locked up in a meeting.

It was therefore not possible to get an official statement from the management, as to what they were going to do about the plight of the aggrieved workers who are bent on continuing with the demonstration until their demands are finally met by the management of the hospital.