The government has expressed surprise at the decision of doctors to lay down their tools.

The Ghana Medical Association has asked its members to go on strike from yesterday in protest against delays in the migration of doctors onto the Single Spine Salary Structure.

But the Deputy Health Minister, Rojo Mettle Nunoo told Joy News he is surprised at the doctor’s decision since there were engagements by government and the Fair Wages Commission to address their concerns.

“I am …surprised that after all that engagement, after all that transparency, after all the relativities in terms of the medical doctors working together with all the other professional bodies, they still found it necessary to go on their strike,” he said.

He insisted that the government, the Fair Wages Commission and all other bodies working on the migration of the doctors to the SSSS have been very transparent and that the delay could only be blamed on the doctors themselves whose “own internal inability to recognize their own relativities” caused the delays.

Yesterday Joy News checks in some hospitals across the country revealed that doctors were only attending to emergency cases in the interim.

Mr Mettle Nunoo said the doctors should reconsider their decision not to work until their migration onto the single spine pay policy is settled.

“Why should we make the ordinary Ghanaian, the victim of a process which takes time”? the Deputy Health Minister asked.

He appealed to the doctors and other health workers on strike to, in recognition of their Hippocratic oath, rescind their decision and call of the strike.

He assured THE appropriate authorities had doubled their efforts to address their concerns.