Lab technicians begin nationwide strike today

The Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS) has served notice that it will embark on a strike starting Monday, May 28, 2018.

They will withdraw services like blood transfusion and surveillance support.

This, according to the Association, is a strategy to have their challenges acknowledged by medical superintendents and directors, to ensure that citizen benefit from an effective health care system.

In a statement, the Association said the action ensures that work-to-rule was deployed on humanitarian grounds and to also prevent the loss of lives due to prolonged emergency provision services.

[contextly_sidebar id=”47ll8hoJmLrcvzEmOWCcOu62ld9Vnrry”]“Ensuring that work-to-rule was deployed on humanitarian grounds with the hope that authorities will take us seriously and come to the table and allow them to give us concrete steps towards resolving our issues.”

“Prolonging activities including the provision of emergency services before complete withdrawal to ensure no lives were lost unnecessarily while ensuring our issues are attended to. However, instead of the medical superintendents and directors (who are supposed to be team leaders of the health systems) to call on the appropriate authorities to attend to our concerns, some of them rather chose to intimidate some of our members to the extent of threatening their lives; of which some reports have been made to the police.”

“In order to avoid further confrontations, all laboratory services are hereby withdrawn with effect from Monday, 28th may, 2018. These include blood banking, surveys, surveillance and monthly returns into DHIMS 2 among others”.

The association has also accused medical superintendents and directors of disrespecting their profession by employing unlicensed personnel to take their place in their absence and by so doing, endangering the general public.

According to the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists over 90 percent of laboratory processes in public health facilities in Ghana are not controlled, and this threatens the quality or accuracy of lab results churned out.

The association blames this mainly on the lack of supervision and quality control.

Last week Monday Laboratory Technicians embarked on partial withdrawal of their services across the country.

The action was in protest of salary discrepancies that had existed for six years after the introduction of the single spine pay policy.

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By: Farida Yusif/citinewsroom.com/Ghana