Health delivery at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi was stalled on Monday following the staging of a demonstration by junior nurses and midwives at the hospital. Though they were dressed in their professional apparel as usual, the nurses abandoned their respective schedules as they converged on the hospital’s main entrance and took to the streets to demonstrate against the non-payment of salaries. Holding an assortment of placards, the aggrieved junior nurses chanted war songs in demonstration over the government's failure to pay them their salary for the past 20 months. According to the demonstrating nurses, though they had been working at the various departments of the hospital for the past 20 months, they were yet to receive their salaries. They noted that because of the non-payment of salaries, they had been compelled under the current situation to depend on a meager GH¢47 paid to them as monthly allowance by the hospital. The spokesperson for the agitating nurses and midwives, Enoch Agyapong, said though they completed their one-year probation service over six months ago, the Ministry of Health had failed to give them appointment letters. He pointed out that several attempts to make the ministry appreciate the difficult situation they were faced with, had hit the rocks. According to him they decided to embark on a demonstration about two weeks ago but they put it on hold because the Minister of Health, Dr Benjamin Kumbuor, had assured them that government was going to do something about their case. "We called off our intended demonstration with the hope that we will hear something positive from the minister. But no pleasant indication has some from him, that was why we decided to come out like this," the spokesperson noted. Mr. Agyapong indicated that as a way of letting the government know the seriousness of their demand, they had decided to lay down their tools in the meantime and that they would embark on an indefinite strike should the government refuse to listen to them. Source: Daily Guide