Gov’t moves to avert strike by junior doctors

Proactive steps have been taken by the ministries of Health and Finance to prevent junior doctors from embarking on a strike action, an official of the Health Ministry has said.

TV3 gathers about 240 junior doctors are planning to lay down their tools as a result of non-payment of their salaries for the past seven months.

“I think it is something that is of concern to us,” admitted a Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Bampoe.

Speaking on TV3 on Tuesday, April 28, Dr Bampoe revealed that “we have put in place a system and the Ministry of Finance has endorsed that system where the authority to engage are sought earlier and received earlier.

“The next step will be that the Controller and Accountant General’s Department and the Ministry of Finance will then take their biometric details at their facilities and then they can be paid.”

He said the process to obtain the doctors' biometric details may have resulted in the slight delay but it was done to remove ghost names and, by extension, check fraud, Dr Bampoe said.

He, however, pointed out that 191 of the doctors will have their biometric details taken by the end of next week so that they can receive their salaries by the end of next month.

Commenting on the development, Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) Dr Justice Yankson welcomed the new timeline, assuring that “we will try and do our best to control” the junior doctors but asked government not to fail on the given timeline.