Why Should Prez Mills Invite Doctors To Castle?

“We Need Strong Institutions Than Strong Men”

Fair Wages, Labour Commission

Must Be Allowed To Work!!!

News Desk Report

When US President Barack Obama visited Ghana in 2009, one of the thought-provoking lines he dropped addressing Ghana’s Parliament; an admonishment which relevantly continues to reverberate through time, is, “we need strong institutions and not strong men”. The phrase is evergreen.

In the wake of the recent uncalled-for strike by Atheist Adom Winful and his small group of callous doctors, there have been calls from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) quarters for President Atta Mills to invite the doctors to the Castle for negotiation.

Enjoying what is happening and hoping to accentuate the unfortunate situation around President Atta Mills, the NPP flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo and his gang of trumpeting elephants continue to make the point that President Atta Mills needs invite the striking doctors to the Castle and negotiate with them.

The question is; why should President Atta Mills negotiate with the striking doctors?

Since when did the Castle become the Labour Office?

The Fair Wages & Salaries Commission (FWSC) is the constitutional body mandated to negotiate public sector wages and that is the body that the doctors must deal with.

Apart from the FWSC, the National Labour Commission (NLC) is another constitutional body also with mandate to mediate in labour disputes.

Indeed, the NLC has ruled that the doctors should go back to work whiles negotiation continues with the FWSC, but because Dr. Adom Winful and his Ghana Medical Association (GMA) gang are enjoying seen innocent people die, they refuse to return to work.

The doctors are not a special group of people that have to have their issues resolved by the President.

According to a labour expert who prefers to remain faceless and nameless, it is important for the President to stay out of the matter and allow the FWSC and NLC to engage the doctors.

He says, the President will be setting a very bad precedent if he makes a mistake and negotiating directly with the doctors.

“We need to allow our state institutions to work because, that is the only way they can build capacity and grow”, the expert said.

“If we allow the President to wade into the matter, then very soon, the President will be negotiating with all categories of workers and the Castle will become the Chief Labour Officer’s place”, he suggests.

According to the labour expert, it is critical that in building a Better Ghana, we don’t practise the Animal Farm kind of governance system, where “four legs are good and two legs are bad”.

In other words, some category of workers must not be made to feel more important than the others.

“If our sanitary workers also decide to go on strike today, can you imagine what will happen?” the expert asked rhetorically.

“Recently, we were faced with a cholera outbreak and if our sanitary workers and the people who empty our manholes had decided to strike at such period of time, only God knows what would have happened to us”, the expert added, saying once the President has appealed to the striking doctors to go back to work, that’s enough.

“The President’s appeal is enough and he must not go any further by negotiating personally with the doctors”, the labour expert concluded.

For the records, it is these same doctors that destroyed the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS), with their greedy demands.

Dr. Adom Winful and his gang seem today hell-bent on destroying the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), just as they did the GUSS.

It is significant to note that after Government spends billions of the tax payer’s cedis in training the doctors, Ghanaian doctors turn round to hold the Government and the poor tax-payers to ransom.

Indeed, if the Ghanaian medical expert after completing his or her course of study through the sweat and toil of the tax-payer wouldn’t catch the next flight to seek greener pastures elsewhere, then he/she would stay back to help hold nation and compatriots to ransom.

It must be noticed also that, although the nation turns over scores of medical doctors every year, the people of Ghana have to rely on scores of voluntary-spirited Cuban doctor annually.

But that the greedy Ghanaian doctors thinking they are the most important workers, though vampires trying to live on the dying innocent blood, in Ghana today, it is pretty obvious that generality of Ghanaians are getting sick and tired of the callous antics that the doctors continue to exhibit.