Scores of mentally challenged persons were stranded at the Pantang Hospital on Monday morning when they went for treatment as the entire staff embarked on a sit-down strike to drive home their calls for government to stop encroachers from totally taking over the hospital’s lands.

According to the relatives of some of these persons, they were told upon arrival that they were not going to be attended to and so they should go home and return on a later day when the strike might have been called off.

Kwaku Poku said he received a call from the hospital last week that his nephew would be discharged today so he came from Kumasi with the dawn bus only to find out the hospital was on strike.

Not happy with the turn of events, he said he will not return to Accra for his ward if he is not allowed to leave with him today.

An emotional mother, Fati Fuseini, told Ghanaweb TV that her son who is mentally challenged refused to sleep last night so she brought him to the hospital but the doctors and nurses have refused to attend to him.

She said her plea with them to just prescribe some medicine for her to get him so he can calm down till the strike is called off has fallen on death ears.

Retired Chief Inspector, Opoku Agyemang also said he brought his daughter all the way from the Volta Region to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital but the staff refused to admit her since they were on strike.

Many others who came to the hospital had to leave because no one was ready to attend to them and by 10:00 am, both the General Out-Patient Department and the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department were deserted with no one but nurses and doctors lurking around.