Pharmacists partially suspend strike

                                                              
According to the Government and Hospital Pharmacists Association (GHOSPA), the second phase of its strike action which would have seen the withdrawal of emergency services has been put on hold.

According to GHOSPA, they will resume services at emergency units but will not offer services to Outpatients Departments (OPDs).

The development, according to Stephen Corquaye, National Chairman of GHOSPA, is as a result of assurances from government and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health to get their matter resolved.

“The Chief of Staff gave us assurance that within the week they will deal with this matter but we told them that we don’t take the final decision and that we will go back and discuss with our members. Before that, we have had a letter from Chief of Staff that was going to set us back,” he said.

“Eventually we decided that we are going to go on a partial strike and wait for the Chief of staff’s response. His response was supposed to come after we started our partial strike. We never heard from him until quite recently when the parliamentary select committee intervened…and we told them that because of the goodwill we will not scale up the strike. The partial strike meaning that we are not going to provide services to outpatients and weekend services and night services is still on,” Mr. Corquaye added.

Pharmacists withdrew out-patient services last week citing reasons of the Finance ministry’s failure to address their grievances by migrating them unto the Single Spine Salary Structure despite a directive by the Chief of Staff almost a year ago.