March 11, 2016

Junior doctors at Korle-Bu to also go on strike
Audrey Micah, Ghanadot

Accra, May 4, Ghanadot - Junior doctors at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital have expressed their full and unrelenting support for their colleagues at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).

The doctors are of the opinion that the action of the junior doctors at KATH has been long over due and “inevitable” with respect to the manner in which they have been treated.

The doctors say they meet in the afternoon of May 4 to decide whether or not to join their counterparts in Kumasi on the strike action.

Junior doctors at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi embarked on a strike action on May 1 claiming that say their salaries are woefully inadequate and claim that some allowances due them, especially for fuel, were not getting to them.

The Health Minister, Dr. George Sipa Yankey, has urged them to call off their strike action and return to work but according to the doctors, until these major concerns and other issues relating to their conditions of service were resolved, there was no way they would rescind their decision and return to work.

According to him, the junior doctors have not been faithful to previously agreed upon arrangements of settlement of their allowances and says he faults them for not giving the authorities ample time to deal with their grievances.

The Health Minister who was speaking on Citi FM is of the opinion that the junior doctors should reciprocate the benevolent action of Ghanaians who have sponsored their education by returning to work.

Junior doctors at KATH, refused to resume work after the Health Minister, Dr. George Sipa Yankey, had urged them to call off their strike action and return to work.

The doctors say their salary is woefully inadequate and claim that some allowances due them, especially for fuel, were not getting to them.

According to them, until these major concerns and other issues relating to their conditions of service were resolved, there was no way they would rescind their decision and return to work.


Dr. Sipa Yankey said the dilemma of unpaid allowances was not the making of the Atta Mills administration and questioned the rationale behind a strike action that had not been sanctioned by the authorities of the hospital.

He noted that per a Memorandum of Understanding signed after a meeting on Saturday May 2, 2009 between some members of the Junior Doctors Association of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and himself, the allowances were to be paid in full by Friday, May 8 2009.

Dr. Sipa Yankey attributed the current situation to what he refers to as “systematic failures” noting that there are currently no systems in place to deal with the issues and as such the protraction of the matter of allowances.

He also noted that the administration of the hospitals in the country had been urged to pay the allowances of their junior doctors and notes that “if by Friday they do not make full payment or come to an acceptable agreement between them and the doctors, I will sanction them and sanction I will.

Ghanadot