GMA Warning: Very Soon Doctors Will Abandon Gov�t Hospitals To Set Up Tables By Roadside

President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Adusei has intensified the warning of the association by abandoning government hospitals if by June 30, 2015 the condition of service is not ready.

Doctors and health practitioners in the public sector have been working for 19 years without any conditions of service.

According to them the only benefit they get from their work is a two week mortuary service when they die.

To ensure that doctors have conditions of service, the GMA, in 2014, gave a deadline of June 30, 2015 to the government to ensure that doctors in the public sector have a negotiated and signed conditions of service document.

At a news conference in Cape Coast last Sunday, the GMA reiterated its call on the government, threatening an industrial action in July if its members’ conditions of service were not negotiated and signed by the end of June.

The GMA, in that communiqué, had indicated that if by the end of the deadline the conditions of service document was not secured, all the affected doctors would consider themselves unemployed.

Speaking to that effect on Okay Fm’s "Ade Akye Abia" Morning Show, Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Adusei reiterated that this warning is to remind the government and Ghanaians that the threat which was issued last year 2014 still holds, urging the government to work towards their conditions of services.

He bemoaned that since 1996, doctors and health service practitioners have been working without conditions of service, stating they cannot allow this to continue forever.

He asserted that the conditions of service is not about money issue but rather a guide tool for both government as an employer and the doctors as employees which will clearly define the status quo of the doctors and the government.

He emphasized on the warning to the extent that by the end of June this year, if government has not signed the conditions of service, it should consider doctors in government hospitals as unemployed.

“We are serious about this warning that if by June ending and the government has not signed the conditions of service, we will resigned from our work….the medical service is not the only work we can do, there are so many works we can do in the private sector. We have private hospitals around and like a doctor said, we can survive from setting up tables from the roadside with our tools and work to feed our families...so we have a lot of work to do,” he warned.