The Ghana Medical Association(GMA) is insisting that medical practitioners across the country are complying with the strike declared by some labour groups over non-payment of tier two pensions.
Citi News’ checks indicate that some workers belonging to the various labour unions are yet to fully implement the directive to strike across the country.
A visit to some institutions in Accra indicated that employees at the various institutions are yet to fully comply with their union leader’s directive.
About 12 labour groups announced their decision to embark on a strike to compel government to pay their tier two pension contributions into a privately managed account.
Though the Minister of Labour and Employment, Haruna Iddrisu described the strike as unlawful, the Executive Director of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe believes the strike is justifiable.
In a statement released on Wednesday Franklin Cudjoe stated that the strike was inevitable after “very little efforts were made” following appeals to the government to address the concerns of the unions.
[contextly_sidebar id=”LKVsg5jxtm1Iqk11bZDSQz37I97a4Ntt”]Speaking on Eyewitness News, the General Secretary of the GMA, Justice Yankson said medical practitioners are following the directive given by the various labour unions to the letter.
“…as far as the GMA is concerned, nobody has broken the law.What you need to remember is that perhaps as a medical association and to some extent the other unions in the health sector one of the peculiar nature of the kind of job we do is that we have given specific directions to our members and we are to go to work and do the in patient and emergency and so if you find some doctors working .ie attending to emergency cases it does not mean they have broken rank. It is rather a confirmation of what they have been advised or they have been told by their leadership to do.”
He added that their strike is justifiable since government has not shown commitment to settling their outstanding claims.
He said: “Our message is simple, we want government to listen to us and ensure that our schemes are working properly. We didn’t set out to punish Ghanaians in anyway. That is not our focus, our focus is that government should make our scheme operational,send the monies there and make sure the monthly contributions are made available.”
“Even with the tier one funds, there are issues there and government has refused to make the payments. And now there are issues with tier two. Are you saying that we should go home…?Is that the kind of system we want to build for ourselves. Others work every four years, they are given huge sums of money others work during weekends etc and the will go home with nothing. What kind of animal situation are we talking about? The pensions’ act is backed by law,” Yankson added.
By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana