Striking laboratory workers are likely to return to work by close of day Wednesday if interventions by the Health Ministry succeed.
Health Minister Kweku Agyemang Manu told journalists he had a long meeting with representatives of the laboratory workers and will soon release a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which will capture a roadmap of how concerns of the striking workers will be addressed in the long term.
The lab technicians are crying over what they say are salary discrepancies detected from 2012 till date.
The discrepancies happened as a result of implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), which was instituted to correct salary disparities.
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Public Relations Officer of the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists Dennis Adu-Gyasi told Joy News that for over six years they have tried to engage officials to resolve the discrepancies but nothing concrete has come out of it.
They declared a strike on May 21 to press home their demand for a resolution of their grievances.
Already patients in some of the public hospitals across the country are beginning to bear the brunt of the strike, but Manu says the concerns of the striking workers have been attended to.
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“We had a long meeting yesterday in the middle of the night. We were preparing an MOU that will end the strike and give us a roadmap towards which we will settle some of the issues they raised,” he stated.
He said the MOU will be signed Wednesay morning so that the aggrieved workers will resume work.
The minister described it as unfair attempts by some nurses to picket and demand employment immediately upon completion of school.
He said the Akufo-Addo government lifted an embargo on public sector employment as a result of 17,000 nurses being employed.
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“Last year we recruited 17,000 nurses. Is that not concern enough? I don’t understand what is happening. You sit home for several years, since 2012. There was a government that had put an embargo on employing you people. Last year we lifted it and recruited and you come picketing forcing me to do what is not doable,” he lamented.
He said the fact that you have finished school does not mean compulsorily government should find you a job.