The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu has implored the nurses and midwives to return to work since their outstanding salaries will be paid by end of October.
[contextly_sidebar id=”H6YDp7FVLW7fVNn7Tf4WnugTeFkBvYsV”]“I want to appeal to our nurses to get back to work and be assured, I have not reneged on my word,” he said.
Over 7,000 members of the Coalition of Unpaid Nurses and Midwives on Monday declared an indefinite strike to demand the payment of salaries owed them by government in the last three years.
They claimed the decision was because several attempts to have their grievances addressed have yielded no positive results.
Speaking on Eyewitness News however, the Labour Minister, Haruna Iddrisu said the strike was not necessary because processes are far advance for their salaries to be paid.
He said 90 of the nurses were paid at the end of September 30 and “about 258 have been processed for payment tomorrow [Tuesday] by 2pm.”
“I met with the nurses on Friday including the leadership of the psychiatric nurses and I gave them every assurance that 7,900 were being processed to be paid by end of this month. And indeed we could hazard paying them within a fortnight but the difficulty is that it will affect payment of salaries for all category of public sector workers in the country. But we can’t take such risk,” he said.
Haruna Iddrisu also pleaded with the nurses to remain calm and “support me so that we will complete the HR due diligence process that is being done by the Ministry of Health and the Auditor General’s office.”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana