Doctors at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital have postponed their planned service withdrawal due to 13th-month wage arrears.
The organization had previously threatened to withhold services to the hospital's Outpatient Department as well as elective operations and procedures from February 6-10 if management did not provide a clear timeline for payment of the arrears.
If nothing was heard from management by February 13, it warned that emergencies would be rejected until all in-patients were released.
Dr. Frank Owusu-Sekyere, Chairman of the Korle-Bu Doctors Association, stated that the withdrawal of services, which was scheduled to commence today, February 6, has been postponed pending the completion of an agreed-upon deadline with management for the payment of wage arrears.
"Management issued a statement outlining the dates by which they believe they can settle the remaining debts. So we just had an association meeting, and we agreed to the management of the date has given us, hoping that they would keep their end of the deal, so there is no threat to it before it is paid. So, by the end of March, 25% of the arrears will be paid, and another 25% will be paid by the end of June," he stated.
In a previous protest letter, the physicians accused management of discriminating in the payment of arrears of the 13th-month wage for doctors working at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
The physicians also alleged that their request to management not to pay the 25% arrears unless there was a clear agreement on the dates for the remaining arrears was ignored.
They further stated that the payment of arrears appears to have been delegated to the departments rather than being paid from a central pool.
According to the doctors, decentralizing payment will disadvantage doctors working in financially stressed departments.