Tamale, Aug. 15, GNA- Delegates at a workers' forum in Tamale on Friday, lauded the National Health Insurance Scheme but rejected the proposed deduction of two and half per cent of workers' SSNIT contributions as seed money for the scheme.

The delegates representing the Northern Regional branch of the various labour unions, in a resolution said the two and half per cent deduction from workers' SSNIT contributions "is completely unacceptable".

The Joint Consultative Forum, made up of the Trades Union Congress, Civil Servants' Association (CSA), Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Ghana Registered Nurses' Association (GRNA) and the Judicial Services Staff Association of Ghana (JUSSAG) organized the forum to solicit views of members on the proposed National Health Insurance Scheme and its funding.

The resolution said as stakeholders and owners of SSNIT contributions, workers should have been consulted.

The workers also rejected the imposition of a national health insurance levy, saying "we see the deductions as an imposition on workers as contained in the National Health Insurance Bill". They said the national health insurance levy would burden and compound the cost of living of Ghanaians.

The resolution said "if the bill becomes law in its present form, the mutual health insurance organizations would be subject to government control".

Offering alternatives to funding of the scheme, the workers proposed that the government should use a certain percentage of their income tax deductions to fund the programme.

The government, they suggested, should also source funding from the HIPC Fund while a percentage of the District Assemblies' Common Fund could also finance the scheme.

The resolution proposed that the government should use medical bill facilities enjoyed by workers to establish their own mutual health insurance schemes and manage them with support from the government.