Korle Bu nurses suspend strike after management assurance

Junior nurses at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital have suspended their strike over unpaid salary and other allowances for a month.

They called off the strike just hours after it began on Monday following promise by the hospital’s management to begin paying their monthly salaries from today.

They are yet to receive their first salary since they started work nearly two years ago.

The one-month moratorium will allow management some space to arrange payment of their 21 month salary arrears.

Earlier today, more than 600 of them staged a demonstration at the hospital to protest the non-payment of their salaries.

They had earlier given management a week to respond to their concerns after a brief meeting, but acting Chief Executive of the Hospital Rev Albert Botchwey insisted the hospital could not meet the one week deadline and rather asked for a month.

“I will just say that let’s give ourselves one month to come back to the table. I am not saying one month for you to be paid, I say by one month we would have done all the necessary consultations, put our cash flow together and we will be able to say that if you give us this time we will be able to solve the problem.

“Or the other option is that we are going back to government to say that yes for the salary we can sustain it but the allowances is too much for us.”

In the meantime, Mr. Botchwey says this month’s salary would hit the nurses’ account by close of day today.

The nurses have warned they will return to the streets if they do not receive any clear plan for the payment of their 21 month salary arrears when they meet at the end of the October.