A Labour Analyst Austin Gamey has said the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has no right to embark on a strike while negotiating with Government over the conditions of service insisting the association is acting in bad faith.
This according to him is because the crux of the current dispute is not about the non-payment of their salary.
[contextly_sidebar id=”MoL1JbnQQoJCurtmaNcPXMgwMOCTI5ic”]A strike by the doctors to protest the absence of conditions of service document that will among other things guarantee them clothing and fuel allowances enters day five today.
In an interview with Citi News, the former Employment Minister also stated that the conduct of the doctors offends the law.
“They have the right to strike but they do not have the right to be on strike when they are negotiating a condition of service. It is not about their monthly pay and the present condition of service that the employer is denying them and therefore they want to take an action…but this is about a new condition of service for which they had submitted proposals to the employer.”
He explained that “If the employer is delaying, according to the law, they are to report the conduct of the employer to the National Labour Commission (NLC).”
“They don’t have the right and the pleasure at their disposal to say that the NLC is a toothless bulldog and therefore they will not go there, they don’t have that right. Just as they don’t have the right to take anybody’s live under the constitution of Ghana, they don’t have the right and the pleasure to say the will not appear before the NLC,” he added.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana