Chris Ackumey to Pharmacists: Your Strike Is An Indication of Impunity And Disrespect

Lawyer Chris Ackumey, a private legal practitioner and sympathizer for the ruling NDC has criticized the striking pharmacists for not dragging the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission to the court to seek redress with regards to the implementation of the grading structure of pharmacists, after the National Labour commission ruled in their favour. According to the Lawyer, the failure on the part of Government Hospital Pharmacists (GHOSPA) �shows some kind of impunity and disrespect to the Institutions which are to enforce and contain our actions and inactions�. He stated: �If we allow indiscipline to take the better part of us without any recourse to law and order, we would have this kind of situation and at the end of the day chaos would reign supreme. "If you have a cause of action, like the ruling that has been delivered in your favour and it is supposed to be implemented by a party and the party is not implementing it. There is a road map in the labour laws of this country as to which stage matters should go at one time or the other up to the Supreme Court. Why do you result to strike when you know very well that you are a component part of what is termed as essential services group which are not supposed to go on strike? I mean it is complete indiscipline�. Lawyer Ackumey made these statements in reaction to the revelation made by Mr. Nii Ofei Palm, the Head of Communications for the Government Hospital Pharmacists Association (GHOSPA) that the Pharmacists working in government hospitals embarked on the strike action because of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) refusal to implement the ruling of the National Labour Commission (NLC) with respect to the grading structure for Pharmacists. Pharmacists, together with Medical Doctors staged a sit-down-strike a fourth night ago to press home their demands for the implementation of the grading structure and payment of allowance arrears respectively. This was after the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and Ghana National Association of the Teachers (GNAT) had set rolling, what many describe as seemingly unending series of strike actions. Despite the fact that, GHOSPA finally decided on an industrial action after eighteen months of negotiations and the flouting of the NLC ruling by the FWSC, Lawyer Chris Ackumey is of the view that their action were unruly since they still had the opportunity of going to the courts to make sure the verdict by the NLC is enforced.