Parliament has added its voice to the many pleas to Doctors to resume work. The House reconvened on Tuesday after a three month recess for the last meeting of the year.
On the floor of Parliament, the Minority Leader, Hon Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu recounted the avoidable death of a pregnant woman at the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital due to the absence of a doctor to colleague Members of Parliament, to drum home the point that the strike by the Doctors is getting out of hand.
�The Pregnant woman went to Komfo Anokye to deliver, nobody attended to her, they went round scampering for help, they couldn�t touch base with any ready hands, the woman perished and the unborn baby perished as well, certainly this cannot be right,� he said.
To him, this is the time to find a permanent solution to a pending problem not the time to play politics.
�Now is not the time to apportion blames, it is important for us to look at it dispassionately, very objectively and see how we can help to solve this matter before us,� he said.
The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has for over two weeks been on strike following the inability of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) to address their grievances regarding their migration onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).
On Monday, October 24th, the Doctors started a compulsory arbitration process as directed by the National Labour Commission. The strike action, however, persists, regardless of a provision in the Labour Act which requires striking parties to call off their strike immediately a compulsory arbitration is enforced.
Speaking in an interview with Shamima Muslim on Citi FM�s Eye Witness News, the Minority leader said: ��it is a matter that we should all be concerned and as parliament convened today, I decided to draw attention to how urgently the problem needs to be solved. It is not time to apportion blame but to find a definite solution to it�,� he said.
He reiterated that it was wrong for insults to be hurled at the Doctors when the strike action started; since he believed that action rather aggravated the situation.
��A hungry man is an angry man especially when insults were hurled at them; but we should not be condemning, what we can do is to plead with them to come back and then after try to remedy wrongs, because where there is a will, there is a way and we must find the way to attend to their needs,� he added.
Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com
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