Nurses, midwives call off strike, resume work on Thursday

The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has suspended its nationwide strike.

The leadership of the association called off the three-day-old strike today, September 23, 2020, but the health workers are to resume work on Thursday.

The strike was suspended because the leadership of the association said they had officially received a court injunction restraining them from embarking on the industrial action.

The restraining order was secured by the National Labour Commission last Friday but the association still went ahead with the strike claiming it had not been properly served with the court document.

“Yesterday, Tuesday, September 22, 2020, around 4:30 pm, we received notice from the head office administrator that a court bailiff had formally and properly come to the office to serve the injunction on the GRMA and its associates. Because of our respect for the court, we have decided to suspend our strike action with effect from Thursday, September 24, 2020, at 8 am pending the outcome of our negotiations,” President of GRNMA, Mrs Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo said at a press conference on Wednesday.

She further cautioned the Ministry of Health against victimizing any of its members.

“At this juncture, we take the opportunity to inform our employment, the Ministry of Health and its agencies and managers of some Ghana Health Service facilities to halt all forms of intimidation tactics towards our members. We want them to know that an attack on any nurse, midwife, is an attack on the fraternity in Ghana. The fact that our employers attempted to incite the courts against us with regards to citing of contempt and subsequently arresting me and the leadership amounts to gross intimidation which is a problem, “she added.

The strike which enters day three this morning is already biting hard at the government as nurses and midwives across the country have laid down their tools.

As a result, scores of patients have been left stranded while others were referred to private health facilities for care.

At the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, patients who had been left unattended lamented the struggle they have had to endure.

For instance a sickle cell patient, who is due to deliver through a caesarean birth yesterday, is reported to be left unattended to at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

The picture is not different from the other parts of the country were access to healthcare has adversely affected by strike action.

Nurses on Monday begun an indefinite strike over benefits such as rent and transportation allowances.

The striking groups include the Ghana Registered Association (GRNMA), Ghana Physicians Assistants Association and Ghana Association of Registered Anaesthetists among others.

The GRNMA is demanding better conditions of services from government and hopes the strike action would send the message and trigger an immediate response.

On September 18, the National Labour Commission (NLC) obtained an interlocutory injunction against the GRNMA to restrain the association from embarking on its proposed strike.

The Accra High Court (Labour Division Court 1), presided over by Justice Frank Aboagye Rockson, in granting the injunction, ordered the nurses to sit down with the NLC to get their grievances resolved.

But the nurses and midwives carried through their threat to demand what is due them from the government.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Bernard Oko-Boye is urging nurses to return to post after they embarked on a nationwide strike over poor conditions of service.

According to him, government has taken into consideration their concerns and has begun fulfilling some of them in the interim.

“It is not every item that has been approved. It takes negotiation over a period to get a final document that everybody is happy with.”

“What I am glad about is that some of the things they requested have been approved by government,” Dr Oko-Boye told JoyNews.

Meanwhile, Dr Oko-Boye said that government has been receptive to nurses’ demands and are hoping their conditions will be resolved within 48 hours.

He stated that government has no intentions of fighting the nurses on their demands saying that “you don’t fight a work group that is not happy.”

The Minister added that “what I am happy about is that the attitude of the government has been positive.”