Inviting Cuban doctors to assist is not the solution, Dr Richard Anane says…

Dr Anane(middle) the minority the spokesman on health.

The government should take immediate steps to address the issues relating to the health sector, especially the Ghana Medical Association said the Minority in Parliament yesterday and also advises the doctors to accept the government’s offer and return to their post.

Dr Richard Anane, the Minority Spokesman on Health at a conference in Accra said, inviting the 177 Cuban doctors into the country to assist the healthcare was not the rightful solution to the industrial action by doctors.

He revealed the country involvement on a similar action in the 1980s which proved not beneficial to the nation.

Rather, He said, dialogue and other conflict resolution methods were what were needed to ensure a friendly resolution of the impasse.

Dr Anane said he had trained several Cuban doctors in the past and that are not competent as our Ghanaian doctors.

He therefore urged President John Mahama to, as a matter of urgency, sanction the presidential staffer who leaked the GMA's proposals to the public and give the doctors some level of assurance by addressing the major issues on their list of requests.

Dr Anane reminded the doctors that their strike was resulting in death that could be prevented even though there is weight in their grievances and added that productivity for individuals and the nation at large is being negatively affected.

He added again that the situation reported could not be reversed if and when a solution was found.

He recalled that when doctors in Kenya declared a strike recently, leading to the loss of 11 lives, the government of that country quickly called for dialogue, leading to an amicable solution.

He noted that in Ghana, it was rather party communicators with caustic tongues who were being unleashed on the doctors and so the government should restrain communicators from making unguided statements on the issue.

Dr Anane on his final speech said the rate of recurrence of strikes had proofed the weakness of the National Labour Commission (NLC), adding that the organisation had become a one-man outfit that had proved incapable of dealing with the problems on the labour fro

 The NLC need to be strengthened with competent people capable of dealing with issues brought before it, he stated.

"We urge the government to, as a matter of urgency, constitute the board of the commission to ensure the effective 

implementation of its mandate," he added.

By: Mark Anthony Vinokor

Date: Friday, 21 August 2015

Published in General News