The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has asserted that the on-going strike was necessitated by government’s lack of seriousness during negotiations over members’ conditions of service.
The doctors also accused government of failing to properly mandate representatives capable of taking any decision on its behalf at negotiations table.
A press statement issued at the end of GMA’s 4th National Executive Council (NEC) in Koforidua yesterday, disclosed that the chairmanship position of the government team, for instance, was never stable as it kept changing from time to time.
“It must be said that it was only on the day that the roadmap as stipulated by the GMA was supposed to come into force that the government team showed some signs of seriousness with the negotiations. The GMA therefore had no option than to roll out the roadmap on the 29th of July 2015, when no COS (conditions of service) document had been negotiated and signed as was demanded by the General Assembly of the GMA.”
The statement signed by GMA President Dr. Kwabena Opoku-Adusei and General Secretary Dr. Frank Serebour bemoaned government’s resort to “propaganda and lies with the aim of turning/swaying public opinion against the doctors despite the fact that it was the government that had not shown good faith at the negotiation table.”
Government was also accused of releasing “several altered and fallacious documents” into the public domain to make it appear as if government was making concessions while the GMA was being recalcitrant.
The striking doctors have set an August 14, 2015 date to either to call off the two-week old strike or resign en masse.
