Nurses Unhappy at Korle-Bu

Accra, Dec. 20, Lens -- There is growing unrest among Nurses and Doctors working outside Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and other leading hospitals over discrimination in salaries and allowances.

The Lens can reveal that a meeting was held at the Tema Genaral Hospital last Friday, attended by representatives from some of these hospitals, to discuss the problem and among the options being considered to bring the matter to public attention so as to get the government to redress the anomaly is the option of embarking on a sit down strike.

Sources close to the aggrieved nurses told The Lens that for sometime now nurses outside the so-called big hospitals like Korle-Bu and Ridge have been receiving salaries and allowances higher than their colleagues in so-called small hospitals like Tema General Hospital and the Mamobi Polyclinic, a situation the nurses consider discriminatory.

?For sometime now we have been trying to use backroom channels to get the matter resolved amicably without the need to go on strike, but all our efforts have been not yielded the desired results. Prior to the elections it appeared that government was about to give us a positive response, but now it appears government is digging in, and it does not appear that government wants to redress our grievance,? the source revealed.

?We consider it discriminatory for people who perform the same functions and duties that we do to enjoy higher salaries and allowances than us just because they happen to be working in the so-called big hospitals. This discrimination is adversely affecting the morale and self-confidence of our nurses, as it has the tendency of making them out as inferior to their colleagues who are enjoying higher salaries and allowances. We believe that unless the situation is resolved quickly it most nurses in the so-called small hospitals will start doing everything in their power to get transferred to the so-called big hospitals or look for greener pastures elsewhere, even outside the country.,? our source pointed out.

Indications are that unless the aggrieved nurses ?some light at the end of the tunnel? the nation would be faced with another strike action by nurses very soon.