General News of Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Source: B&FT

Korle Bu mgmt moves to curb labour unrest

Management of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital is expected to meet aggrieved staff today in an attempt to contain an intended strike action by some of the hospital personnel.

The aggrieved staff, who called themselves Concerned Staff of Korle-Bu, have already served notice to embark on a sit-down strike on Monday February 16, to press home demands for anomalies in their conditions of service to be addressed.

However, the Public Relations Officer of the hospital, Mustapha Salifu has confirmed to the B&FT that a meeting has been scheduled for today for both the management and staff to address the workers concerns.

“Management is going to see those behind it, we want to understand the issues and see whether we can take a position”.

Already, there are concerns that the Concerned Staff are turning away patients.

Mr. Salifu said: “We heard reports of people turning patients away, for now we will have to wait and see”.

The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Ghana’s premier hospital, has been fraught with scandals in the past weeks and recently the Board interdicted the Director of Pharmacy and nine other employees at the Pharmacy Department for misappropriating approximately GHC946,574.29 through bad procurement processes.

The concerned workers are now blaming the management of the hospital for conspiring with the leadership of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association to deduct unapproved dues from their salaries since October 2014 into the accounts of the association.

According to the group, they are not members of the Korle Bu Senior Staff Association and they are at a loss as to why certain dues are being deducted from their salaries without their consent. A section of the aggrieved workers claim appeals to the management for the anomaly to be solved have failed, hence their intended action.