Bolgatanga, Nov. 01, GNA - Members of the Upper East Region Branch of Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) on Wednesday refuted an allegation by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) on the new health sector salary structure.

Mr Emmanuel Abanga, Upper East Regional Chairman of GRNA, addressing a press conference at Bolgatanga said the salary structure being referred to by NAGRAT and GNAT as health workers salary structure was rather the proposals made by a Consultant but it was not being used to pay health workers.

He explained that since 1999 health workers were given Additional Duty Hour Allowance (ADHA) but was beset with several problems including discrepancies, delays, and abuses such as payment to people who did not deserve it.

Mr Abanga said to solve the problem, Government in consultation with various health workers contracted a consultant to come out with a comprehensive salary structure that would factor in the ADHA.

He explained that the negotiations on the salary structure lasted over two years and said it was therefore wrong for the teachers to assume that the new salary structure came into being as a result of industrial action embarked upon by health workers.

Mr Abanga noted that the new salary structure rather brought in its wake wide disparities among various health professionals and this led to various petitions and industrial action by all health workers except medical officers for the new salary structure to be reviewed. "As a matter of fact we are still at the negotiation table for the salary structure to be reviewed," he said.

Mr Abanga said as nurses recognized the rights of other workers to seek better conditions of services, they would not allowed themselves to be used as a yard stick for comparison of negotiations.

"We would therefore like to state clearly that the figures being used by NAGRAT and GNAT as salaries of health workers are not only false but mischievous. Those figures were the proposals by the consultant and not what is being paid to health workers as at now," He stressed. Mr Abanga said it was therefore, unfortunate that the leadership of NAGRAT and GNAT who should have known better were peddling such wrong information about health workers salaries.