<<Print>>Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr has stated that doctors from Cuba which are earmarked as substitutes to striking Ghanaian doctors won’t come cheap.
Kwesi Pratt in a direct response to calls by certain government communicators for the importation of the doctors from the North American Island to replace the striking members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) said he does not believe the doctors would want to come to serve in Ghana cheap. This reason, he said stems from the fact that the Cuban doctors while in Ghana were never treated fairly by the Government of Ghana, thus forcing most of them out. “Everyone knows that Former President Kufuor belongs to the right but he was able to negotiate with Cuba and during the eight years of his reign, 200 Cuban doctors came into the country yearly to serve…,” Kwesi Pratt revealed.
This figure, according to him increased to 300 during the time of late President John Mills after then Vice President John Mahama negotiated further the existing agreement.
Members of the GMA are on strike demanding fair conditions of service from their employers, Ghana government. Various government communicators have since the declaration of the strike action attacked the doctors. While National Communication Officer, Solomon Nkansah labeled them as ‘nation wreckers’, his deputy, Kwaku Boahen told them in plain language to resign as government is ‘sick and tired’ of their demands. Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the NDC, Joseph Kobina Ade Coker also tasked government to go in for the Cuban doctors to replace the striking ones in Ghana. “If these doctors demand persists, then I urge government to just go to Cuba and recruit doctors into the country and pay them. It’s about time we told our doctors, enough is enough. The people of Ghana must rise up against them...,” he said.
But the call of the NDC chair, Kwesi Pratt said cannot be acted upon by the government since the Mahama-led administration abused the agreement that existed since the Kufuor era and that has led the Cuban doctors to exit the shores of Ghana. “Do we think the Cuban doctors are prostitutes? they won’t come cheap because the few that we had we didn’t treat them well…today we have none…,” he said. Besides, Pratt continued that the doctors in accordance with ethics of the profession would not want to come into the country at the time government is in tango with Ghanaian doctors.