Accra (Greater Accra) 7 April ’99
All health workers and professionals who do overtime are to be paid allowances for extra duty hours actually done. A communiqu? signed on Tuesday night by two ministers and two executive members of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) at the end of negotiations to end a seven- day strike by nurses for overtime allowance, has said. The communique, signed by Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr Samuel Nuamah Donkor, Minister of Health, Mrs Emma Banga, President GRNA and Felix Fonder, Vice-President, Nurse Anaesthetists, have therefore asked all health workers on strike to resume work immediately.. It said overtime payment would be based upon submission of duty rosters authorised by heads of department and institutions and attendance books. The communiqu? said within a month from the submission of completed data, the government side would effect payment of all overtime claims. The effective date of implementation would be January one, 1999. Junior Nurses in public hospitals and polyclinics went on strike on March 31 to back demands for overtime allowance. The strike virtually paralysed the hospitals and put pressure on 37 military and Police hospitals. Senior nurses who held the fort were over-stretched and no new admissions were made. Alhaji Mumuni told the Ghana News Agency that with time the overtime duty allowance would be extended to all institutions. “This is to ensure that strike actions demanding payment for extra hours, as it was done by the doctors and nurses, do not happen again.” Alhaji Mumuni stressed that every worker is expected to work for eight hours a day “and any worker who works beyond that is entitled to the allowance.”
