The Deputy Chairman of the National Labour Commission, Kwasi Danso Acheampong has appealed to health workers to cease issuing threats of industrial action and rather channel all their grievances through the Commission for redress. He told Joy News that while further agitations over their genuine concerns could further destabilize the labour front, “the law made the health sector part of the essential services and therefore the law doesn’t permit them to go on strike.” Mr Acheampong was commenting on a decision by Junior Doctors at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital who said they were planning a meeting soon to decide on their next line of action after they reduced their working hours in protest against the non payment of their fuel allowance for nine months. On Thursday the Junior Doctors accused government of bad faith for unilaterally abolishing their allowances and consolidating their salary. They said government had originally agreed with the Ghana Medical Association to negotiate salaries and service conditions for doctors separately, however, a letter signed by the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health, Lepowura Alhaji M.N.D. Jawula said the fuel allowance for the doctors had been rescinded. The decision has also enraged civilian doctors at the 37 Military Hospital who say they will join their Korle Bu colleagues in reducing their working hours from Monday, December 18. The doctors say for the full impact of the action to be felt, they will also not attend to any civilian from Monday. They say they have decided on these actions because their employers have consistently cheated them because they work in a military establishment which does not condone industrial action. Joy News sources at the hospital said the doctors’ action had the tacit support of their military colleagues who were rather mindful of their professional code which did not allow for industrial action. According to the sources, over 80 percent of the doctors at the Military Hospital are civilians, whilst over 90 percent of patients are civilians. But the Deputy Chairman of the Labour Commission said though the Commission was unaware of the complaints of the health workers group, it was ready to take the matter up if the doctors filed a complaint. “As far as the Commission is concerned we are not aware of any dispute arising out of the mapping exercise or the appellate body’s work and therefore if the health service workers think that things are not going well as we all understood it during the discussion period, I think the proper thing for them to do is to lodge a complaint for us to call the other side to know exactly what the problem is. Threats of strike and reduction of work, I think that it is out of place. I will use your medium to appeal to them to always have the tax payers who are not part of this dispute always at hear”, said Kwasi Danso Acheampong. When reminded that the workers said their frustration was to do with government’s seeming inaction to implement corrections in their salary structure, Danso Acheampong said the government usually honoured its reward obligations through taxes and with the 2007 budget recently announced, government would need to capture the concerns in the budget in order to be able to pay. “When you are dealing with governments, all that they do is that they depend on their budgetary allocations to do some of these things and it is important that we all accept the difficulties within and allow the system to work but I think that they should stop issuing threats and try to channel their grievances through the appropriate body for these things to be resolved. I will appeal to them that they should let us know exactly what the problem is so that we can call on the Ministry and those leading the other side for us to immediately meet to get the matter resolved.” The President of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Adu-Ababio who also spoke to Joy News, described government’s action as a stab in the back. He said in March 2006, when negotiations began, there were some inherent problems with the implementation and management of the Additional Duty Hour Allowance so the GMA was invited to engage the government’s side (Management Team) to discuss basic salary. “And here I emphasise basic salary. But we in the negotiating team of the GMA came out of the negotiation with the belief that we have discussed the basic salary of doctors who are our members and therefore the understanding was that all other outstanding issues were going to be decided upon later. Little did we know that there were attempts at some quarters to consolidate or monetize all these allowances. But this was not communicated to us in writing”, Dr. Adu-Ababio maintained. He explained that “somewhere in July we sighted an internal memo from the Ghana Health Service purported to have leaked to the general public and upon sighting this document, we drew the attention of our employers that such a document had been sighted and therefore the implications were obvious, but this was denied.” Dr. Adu-Ababio insisted that the allowances were not part of the negotiations but there were signs that because of the monetization that was to be implemented as a new salary scheme, the allowances were some of the issues the negotiating team of GMA was trying to address, however with the letter from the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health dated November 15, 2006 as well as an accompanying letter from the Chief Administrator of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital abolishing the allowances, the GMA felt slighted. He said the GMA had already raised the outstanding issues, including the state of fuel allowance and 15 percent rent deduction with the Labour Commission while a 15th September date suggested by the GMA to discuss the issues together with their employers fell through. He expressed the hope that a meting next week to be held by the leadership of organised labour and technocrats from the Ministries of Public Sector Reform, Finance and Health to discuss a comprehensive pay scheme would address the issues.