The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu has ordered striking psychiatric nurses to return to work.
Some nurses at the hospital on Thursday embarked on an industrial action to protest the non payment of their salaries.
[contextly_sidebar id=”tTpjEZ7lqS6jYTIesYIVlg50FInwxsBe”]The Minister, who believes their actions are unacceptable on Eyewitness News asked them to resume work while government takes measures to resolve their challenges.
“I will urge them to return back to work tomorrow. I will honour my word and I stand by the assurances that were given. It is work in progress, it is not a matter that we have not acted on.”
He was also disappointed in the nurses for embarking on a strike, saying “I am utterly surprised and disappointed at their resort to a strike.”
“Indeed you just don’t walk through a strike as it pleases you, there are laws which govern and there are processes. I am disappointed and
The Minister explained that the payment of their [nurses] salaries has delayed because of a validation process.
“The validation is not done by my Ministry, it is done by the office of the Auditor General and the HR of the Ministry of Health together with the location and place of work of the affected person so we needed to do a bigger work to appreciate when the person reported to work and as I speak to you, the Controller and Accountant General has my word to process their salaries as supplementary.”
“If we were to wait to compute the 7,948 we would have been obliged to delay the salaries of all public sector workers so we took the risk which was less burdensome.”
He further wondered why the Nurses had laid down their tools when they recently held discussions with his Ministry regarding the payment of their salaries.
“I personally invited them to my office on Tuesday to update them on development on the payment of their salaries and in their presence I reached out to the Controller and Accountant General and the Ministry of Health to appreciate where we were in terms of their payment”
“I was satisfied with the explanation that 7,948 nurses had so far been validated, paid and as I speak to you the payment are being processed by the Controller and Accountant General so I am surprised,”he explained.
Validation concluded
Meanwhile the Ministry of Health has in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and the Audit Service successfully concluded the verification and validation process of the documentation pertaining to the payment of salary arrears of some Nurses.
The Ministry, in statement disclosed that the ” Controller and Accountant General is at the moment keying in the inputs as the system has been opened for this purpose.”
“All affected staff of the Authority will therefore their arrears as soon as possible,”the statement added.
This is the second time Nurses at the psychiatric hospital have embarked on a strike in the year 2015.
The nurses declared a sit down strike on August 3 to demand that their employers pay them all their salaries which had been in arrears for 10 months.
The Employment and Labour Relations Minister, Haruna Iddrisu subsequently moved in to assure the nurses that their salaries will be paid in two month.
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah