We deserve coronavirus motivation package too – Mortuary workers to Akufo-Addo

The Mortuary Workers Association of Ghana (MOWAG) has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to have them added to the list of health workers billed to benefit from his motivation package.

President Akufo-Addo, on Sunday, 28 June 2020, in an address to the nation, announced that all frontline health workers would be paid an additional fifty per cent of their basic salary to motivate them in the fight against COVID-19.

The government had earlier announced a package to insure all frontline health workers in the country.

However, MOWAG, in a statement signed by its General Secretary, Richard Kofi Jordan, noted that “it has been excluded in the said motivation package.”

According to MOWAG, in an “eligibility criteria document that has come to its notice, it appears that the latter has been conveniently excluded from the said motivational package for unknown reasons.”

MOWAG continued that it is “positive that the exclusion of its membership is an oversight” and urged the “government to cause the inclusion of our membership in the eligibility list” if that supposition is correct.

It reiterated that “MOWAG is the final group of workers who handle the remains of the dead, including COVID-19 victims. It should, therefore, be only a matter, of course, to include mortuary workers in this package.”

MOWAG was optimistic that the inclusion of its members, “will go a long way to shedding off the view that that segment of essential workforce has been treated unfairly for a long time.”

MOWAG sees this as “one-time opportunity to cancel that impression.”