Pantang staff demonstrate today

Striking staff of the Pantang Psychiatric Hospital are set to hit the streets today, Wednesday, 12 July 2017 to protest against what they say is the illegal takeover of lands belonging to the hospital.

Wednesday’s action comes on the back of a two-day sit-down strike which begun on Monday, 10 July during which only in-patients and emergency cases were attended to, a situation that affected OPD healthcare services.

The move, according to the staff, is to draw government’s attention to the dangers private developers pose to health workers and patients at the facility.

The street protest on Wednesday seeks to pile more pressure on government to act to ward off encroachers.

Speaking to Class News, head of the Pantang Hospital Staff, Elvis Akuamuah said: “The frontage of our hospital is being taken over by private developers. It has been going on for a long time even to the extent that some of our wards and clinical structures are on private property. What it means is that sometime very soon, if this is not checked the entire hospital will be on somebody’s private land.

“Take a look around, look at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, 37 Military Hospital, Ridge Hospital, none of these hospitals is sharing boundaries with residential facilities and businesses and we have been engaging our management on what they are doing about this threat because it will significantly impact negatively.

“Government should halt all development and compulsorily make sure that the frontage of the hospital is left alone. We [staff] are not working to see whether something will be done. We are going on total demonstration and total strike and we will stay away from our work until we see a resolution to this matter.”