Physician assistants (PAs) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) have declared a strike starting Monday over failure to upgrade them unto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).

The PAs say they have had enough of the inability of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) and the Vice Chancellors of Ghana (VCG) to negotiate a good salary for them.

According to them, for the past years, all attempts to get the authorities including the National Labour Commission (NLC) to see to their migration has fallen on deaf ears.

The leader of the PAs, Emmanuel Adjei Henaku says they feel cheated and demoralized.

In an interview with Joy News Central Regional correspondent, Richard Kwadwo Nyarko, Mr Henaku said it took them a year to notice that they have been left out of the SSSS and in 2012, they wrote to notify the administration "thinking it was an administrative error."

He said thus far there has been a series of meetings and communications which have come to nothing. 

"There are piles of letters we have written to UCC, VCG, FWSC and the latest one is to the NLC. Our colleagues elsewhere throughout the country are on the SSSS, but when you come to the UCC, they tell you you don't qualify to be in a certain area," Mr Henaku said.

He added, "that is humiliation, demotion, after working for them for several years."

According to Mr Henaku, this treatment informed their decision to embark on a sit-down strike come Monday, August 1. 

PAs work closely with doctors and handle duties that range from taking medical histories to setting simple fractures. 

They are allowed to prescribe medications in some country. Many PAs specialize in a particular area of medicine, such as pediatrics.