The doctors at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital have temporarily postponed their planned employment termination due to 13-month salary arrears.
If management does not come up with a clear plan for paying the arrears, the group previously threatened to stop providing services to the Outpatient Department as well as elective operations and treatments at the hospital from February 6–10.
If management had not responded by February 13th, it advised that emergencies would not be accommodated until all in-patients were discharged.
The withdrawal of services, which was scheduled to start today, February 6, according to Dr. Frank Owusu-Sekyere, Chairman of the Korle-Bu Doctors Association, has been deferred as a result of a deadline set with management for the settlement of salary arrears.
“Management came out with a letter spelling out the timelines they think they can pay the rest of the arrears. So we just had a meeting as an association, and we have agreed to the timelines management has given, praying that they will stick to their side of the bargain, so there is no threat to it before it is paid. So by the end of March, 25 percent of the arrears will be paid, and then by the end of June, another 25 percent will be paid," he said.
In an earlier protest letter, the doctors accused the management of discrimination in the payment of the arrears of the 13th-month salary for doctors working in Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
The doctors also claimed that the communication to the management not to pay the 25% of the arrears until a clear agreement on the timelines for the remainder of the arrears has gone unheeded.
They added that the payment of the arrears seems to have also been ceded to the departments instead of payment from a central pool.
According to the doctors, by decentralizing the payment, doctors working in financially challenged departments would be disadvantaged.
