Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey
19 June 2008
opinion
Accra — A cursory review of the electronic media late last week revealed most callers heaving a sigh of relief over the announcement that the government had finally overcome its two and a half year tardiness and agreed on a planned framework for administering doctors' salaries albeit being forced to sign the document under threat of strike action by the doctors.
In its aftermath, it has become a matter of extreme importance to address some recurrent labour issues between doctors and their employers as raised by the general public; mainly whether standard labour practices like concluding a negotiation by signing a memorandum of understanding a copy of which should be deposited with the National Labour Commission ought to take that long to conclude and whether industrial unrest had to be threatened before doing it.
In the process, some who perhaps do not sufficiently appreciate the contending issues have been quick to label Ghanaian doctors as a greedy lot who constantly demand an unfair share of the national cake to the disadvantage of other professionals and public sector workers and who perhaps owing to the sensitive nature of their work, have had their demands being met.
Also deserving of some attention is the concern expressed by some non-doctors sympathetic to the cause of doctors that when such labour disputes break, contrary to securing the support, sympathy and understanding of the masses for our cause and against the infractions of government, the doctors do not seem to have sufficiently valued the public relations war to the extent that both supportive and hostile public responses are dished out in equal measure when the support of the public for better conditions of service for doctors should have been something that could be taken for granted normally.
THE MOU The signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week however marked the end of a significant phase of the struggle. The leadership of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) ought also to be commended for keeping their eyes on the ball and especially in the light of the specific tasks set the new leadership by the Takoradi AGM of November 2007. These tasks included securing an MOU with concrete provisions for addressing distorted relativities, wage opener clause (s) and the restoration of fuel allowance (20 gallons/month) illegally and unilaterally abrogated by the government in clear breech of the good faith and unambiguous understanding reached at the Negotiating Table in January 2006.
The GMA leadership has since activated the Wage Opener Clause for the orderly review of doctors' salaries and in the hope that the government will show similar faith and commitment to implementing all decisions negotiated and agreed upon. If both sides show equal measure of healthy respect, there absolutely should be no problems, at least not from the GMA.
In my mind's eye however, I see certain features of this new phase that both the leadership and membership of the Ghana Medical Association ought to be critically mindful of.
The first is the need to continue with our policy of playing by the rules while holding the government accountable on all the provisions spelt out in the MOU for addressing outstanding issues. We must continue to be intolerant of acts of bad faith perpetrated by our employers especially in the light of the Labour Commission's ruling on August 15, 2006 that "now that the Ghana Medical Association has registered as trade union in accordance with Act 651, the employer can no longer take unilateral decisions in issues affecting the GMA, neither can the employer impose its decisions on it.
Rather, what both the employer and the employee's representative should seek to do is always submit proposals for discussion which when approved, would be signed by the parties and would be binding on them as such." Indeed having followed due process all this while, it is not surprising that both rulings of the NLC have been unambiguously supportive of the position of the GMA.
If other labour Unions prefer not to take on the government for willfully reneging on their word, that is a decision we as doctors must respect but not necessarily emulate.
FAIR DEMANDS
The GMA leadership is convinced that not only have our demands been fair and just, but that the work load is such that steps ought to be taken to ensure that the good people of Ghana have access to as many qualified health professionals as possible and the least the government can do is to pay those already working their negotiated salaries to enable them to discharge their duties with peace of mind.
When a new crop of doctors was posted to a District Hospital in Volta who spearheaded the NHIS, OPD attendance shot up from an average of 40 to about 207 per day with serious implications for work load and quality of care. While it may be prudent to adopt a policy of free maternity care following the 46 million pounds donated by the UK government, there is also need to ask ourselves whether we have made adequate provision for manpower support in deprived areas seeing that this policy will have clear implications for increased access.
What would it take for example to ensure that the inequitable distribution of health professionals to the disadvantage of the rural Ghana with sometimes up to about 70% of various health professionals being located in Accra , Kumasi and Takoradi, is addressed?
The second consideration is for both leadership and membership of the GMA to engage more proactively and constructively with the public with the avowed aim of smashing false government propaganda published in a certain pro-government newspaper two years ago and repeated by government spokesperson often enough that on the average, the doctors who were making so much noise were earning as much as 40-50 million cedis a month and were still not satisfied.
This propaganda can only be countered if we as doctors overcome our lethargy and both leadership and members resolve to engage on all fronts to counter every lie that is told with two truths. We must engage on the airwaves, in the print media, with text messages, phone call for phone call and on interactive websites where all insults aimed at doctors based on misinformation ought to be countered with a sympathetic ear, decency and the simple truth of the realities on the ground.
This new approach can never successfully be prosecuted by the GMA leadership alone which is why if you see or hear your President on television or on radio respectively, as a doctor-member with a stake in the matter, it is also your responsibility to call in, text in, shout in, laugh in, corroborate his story, encourage him, re-emphasize hidden points and indeed do whatever else you can to support our decision to tell our own story.
If we all fail in this and allow the public to hear from us only when we are threatening a strike to the total exclusion of all GMA activities aimed at improving health care, then we shall have no cause to complain when our genuine concerns for welfare and for public health interests is mischievously misrepresented by government spokespersons, propagandists and soothsayers. There shouldn't be any doubt whatsoever that all doctors have a lot of work to do in this direction. WE MUST TELL OUR OWN STORY, NO DOUBT
While doing so, we must never deceive ourselves that public opinion is not important. As some in our ranks have pointed out, it is we who have oft displayed an inability to court public favour. We should also never display any lack of sensitivity to the sad realities of various public sector workers who have been having salary reforms for years with no end in sight.
While doing so, doctors ought also to empathize with these workers for it is only in so doing that we can better appreciate the extent of the hostility some feel towards us and it is in understanding the hostility that we can better enable ourselves to counter the propaganda that has stirred up the hostility.
Imagine my mother, an Assistant Director 1 of the Ghana Education Service who after over 30 years in the service earns a take home pay of less than five million cedis per month. She and other teachers are then told I earn 40 million cedis per month which is more than 8 times her salary and still they hear me asking for more?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
