Over 500 workers of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, who call themselves the Concerned Staff of the hospital are set to demonstrate against the management of the hospital on February 16th .
[contextly_sidebar id=”sncpQS59l7pTTxWiqYpELdIddIv8KBFH”]The workers are accusing the management of the hospital for colluding with the leadership of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association to deduct unapproved dues from their salaries since October 2014 into the accounts of the association.
According to the group, they are not members of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association and they are at a loss as to why certain dues are being deducted from their salaries without their consent.
One of the affected workers Konlan Kennedy Dodam who spoke to Citi News said their many appeals to the management for the anomaly to be corrected have been unsuccessful, hence their action.
“We are not members of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association. The group made some deductions from us for the association from our salaries since October 2014, we informed the Chief Executive from November and in December through petitions. He instructed the association to stop the illegal deductions and refund all the monies to the affected staff. Two months after he instructed the deduction is still ongoing,” he stated.
While describing the deductions as illegitimate, Konlan Kennedy Dodam wondered why the management of the hospital had failed to ensure a halt in the deduction of their salaries.
He added that it was the responsibility of the management to protect their salaries and called on the affected staff to support the demonstration on February 16.
“We are therefore calling on all affected staff to join us in a massive demonstration to put pressure on central management and on the association to stop the illegal deduction and refund our monies back to us,” he added.
Konlan Kennedy Dodam said over 1600 nurses of the hospital had been affected by the deduction but over 500 workers will demonstrate because “the rest will be at post because we don’t want to halt operations at the hospital”.
“Because if the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association could make deductions while central management has instructed them to stop, and central management cannot order them to stop and it means management might be endorsing it,” he stated.
But reacting to the concerns of the group, the president of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association Charles Offei Palm rejected the accusations leveled against the association adding that the deductions were made by mistake.
He told Citi News that the workers rejected a refund package the association made to them after their attention was drawn to the anomaly.
“We wrote a letter to controller to that effect but unfortunately the controller has a lot of work to do. We got some money from our donors and sponsors and decided to refund them with the money but they refused to take money but rather demanded that the refund comes from the controller,” he explained.
According to Charles Offei Palm, the two leaders of the group leading and planning the intended demonstration were being influenced by some persons to cause disaffection among workers of the hospital.
The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Board had earlier interdicted the Director of Pharmacy and nine other employees at the Pharmacy Department of the hospital for misappropriating approximately GHC946,574.29 through bad procurement processes.
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By: Franklin Badu Jnr/citifmonline.com/Ghana