If there are any shoes I do not want to wear now, they are those of the Labour and Employment Minister, Haruna Idrissu.
The fine gentleman has undoubtedly a very well-paying job that ensures him a good life, at least. He has a solid car, a gun-wielding body-guard, a huge office, an official bungalow and all the things that can make life in Accra seem like heaven.
But pause, take a minute… and work this exercise to understand my current feeling for the minister of state.
Just Google the words, STRIKE+GHANA. You will be amazed the number of stories that will pop up.
“Public sector pharmacists declare nationwide strike”; “Doctors strike is illegal- labour consultant”; “Call off the illegal strike now-gov’t to workers” and the list of headlines continues…
In fact, the only “happy” news on the search page is about State Attorneys calling off their month-long strike. Even that has a caveat. The Attorneys will put down their gowns and tools again if the results of an arbitration process do not favour them.
A heartbreaking headline among the lot is about psychiatric nurses also striking because of the difficulty in paying them.
One of them told Citi FM it is difficult to look after “psychologically tortured patients” when they themselves are suffering the same fate.
A few days to the doctors’ strike, some 90 junior doctors from different corners of the country had converged on the offices of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department, demanding payment of their salary which was in arrears for some 11 months. In fact, they had intended occupying the facility until the monies hit their accounts.
The Ministries of Employment and Finance had barely finished paying the salaries of the junior doctors when the senior ones began to rant. Well, they have not only been ranting and striking but have threatened to move beyond that and turn in their mass resignation letter in about a month if government does not hand to them a condition of service document.
Haruna Iddrisu’s head might be turning around now. His work is to stop ongoing strike by the doctors and a subsequent mass resignation. This does not seem a big job though because he has managed someway somehow to always send them back to the consulting rooms anytime they ranted and put down their stethoscopes.
That isn’t all Mr Iddrisu got on his ladle though; pharmacists, nurses etc have jumped onto the strike fray…twisting the arms of government (depends on which side you look at it) to get what belongs to them as employees.
Somehow, I feel sad for the Minister in charge. Each night, I imagine what progress report he gives his employer, the President who has adopted a “dead goat syndrome” to strikes.
Well, Haruna Iddrisu isn’t the only man I think about…I also think about the doctors and what they think about…
I imagine what the feeling will be like. Happy, sad…or a mixed one?
I wonder if they read all the messages, taunts and “yabr3mo” jests on social media and on the airwaves.
But I no longer have to think and imagine. I have an answer. They do.
And it gets to them apparently. They are humans too.
General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr Frank Serebour over the weekend flared up on a local radio station. No, he did not exchange any words. The man was angry and vented it out on a government communicator who had passed a “yabre mo” comment on a political show on radio. Many newspapers and media houses have reported that the words he used were unprintable and radio unfriendly…yet they have gone ahead to publish them.
In short, Dr Serebour was angry a government communicator who probably receives much more in salary and allowances for defending the government than the doctors will run them down. They, who are working out their conditions of service with their employer.
Granted, Dr Serebour went too far in expressing his anger and he has not denied that. He even claims he will not repeat same action when provoked in similar manner in future. He however has said he does not regret making them, because “at a point in time you have to let people know that you can also get to that level”.
This is where my admiration for the pediatrician comes in. Nope, I don’t support his insults. But I admire the fact that he is man enough to stand by them.
We have been in this country and seen men and women, many political figures say so many things, sometimes against their own people and turn round to deny the sound of their own voice. What is worse is when one logs into his own social media site, “dish out” at some enemies of the government or their own members and lie in the next post that their accounts were hacked into.
As if that wins them any public sympathy or erases completely what they had been reported to have said or written earlier.
Bad as Dr Serebour’s vituperations sounded, he stood by them and proved he had the requisite size of balls…balls I admire.
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By: Eugenia Tenkorang/citifmonline.com/Ghana