Doctors picket at Controller and Accountant General’s office to demand 11 months salary

Agitating junior doctors are picketing at the office of the Controller and Accountant General to demand payment of their eleven months’ salary arrears.

The doctors are doing this despite assurances from the Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, that their arrears will be paid in full within two weeks.

As at 6:00 am Monday, about eleven doctors have gathered at the office of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department (CAGD), waiting for the rest of their colleagues – about 80 of them – to join.

The 91 frustrated will be hoping to send a stronger message to authorities after many attempts to get their salaries paid hit a snag.

“Since Mr George Baah, the Head of Payroll, says he doesn’t even know we exist, we want to go and introduce ourselves to him, if possible one-by-one, so he will see all ninety-one of us,” one doctor told Joy News.

The doctors last week served notice of their action vowing that they will pitch camp at the CAGD until all their salary arrears is paid them in full.

Dr. Elaine Ababio, one of the leaders of the aggrieved doctors, told myjoyonline.com, his colleagues, scattered across the country, will pitch camp at the premises of the state department each day.

Using the hashtags #payjnrdoctorsnow and #occupyCAGD, the junior doctors stressed that they are “too hungry to pursue any agenda other than getting our 11 months’ salary paid in full to each of us”.

The frustrated doctors conveyed their intentions in a statement issued in Accra last Friday.

Finance Minister Seth Terkper last Saturday assured the agitated medical doctors that they are likely to get the salaries in two weeks’ time.

“I can assure them…in two weeks’ time, those whose clearances have been forwarded and awaiting financial credit would be paid,” Seth Terkper said on Joy FM and MultiTV’s Newsfile.

Explaining the cause of the almost one year delay in the payment of the salaries to the health workers, the Minister said the situation has been caused by the current remuneration system, stressing that there are plans to solve the problem.

The doctors however remain unconvinced by neither the explanation nor the assurance.

They say in spite of the challenges and cumbersome processes enumerated by Mr Terkper, their colleagues at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi got paid all their salaries.

Two of the 91 doctors rushed to the Joy FM studios to confront the minister with evidence of previous assurance which did not materialize.

They said just as their colleagues at Komfo Anokye, they too can and must be paid without further delay.

The two week period proposed by the finance minister is proposing is simply too far, they maintain.


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