Opinion
He may run a labor institute or whatever business that he is into, but his bluster and all, Mr. Austin Gamey’s expertise does not seem to have made any positive impact on our ramshackle national labor establishment; which is why rampant industrial actions or strikes have become the centerpiece of the public and civil service sectors of our economy. And so rather than feeling self-righteous and morally superior to the striking membership of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Mr. Gamey ought to bow his head in shame (See “Terminate Appointment of Doctors, If… - Gamey” Graphic.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 8/19/15).
In a recent interview with the National Democratic Congress-leaning Radio Gold, the so-called labor consultant had the chutzpah to presume to order the Mahama government as follows: “I charge the employer to immediately take action to stop them [i.e. the striking doctors] from working for him.” If, indeed, he is a labor consultant as the Daily Graphic described him, then Mr. Gamey may be the worst of his professional kind. For instance, he was reported to have cited a section of Ghana’s Labor Act and pontifically claimed that section to authorize the government to dismiss any worker/employee without notice.
What kind of nonsense is this? And precisely what category and level of employee did Mr. Gamey have in mind? He may do well to study international labor laws and the rights of public and civil servants to demand livable conditions of service. His sort of snobbish attitude towards the striking doctors tells the critical observer that the man has had perennial trucking with the faux-revolutionary junta that was the Rawlings-led so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). He may also well have been left behind when the country moved into the current democratic dispensation.
I am personally becoming impatient with the unduly prolonged holdout of the GMA doctors. But I am even much more impatient with the seeming lethargic pace at which the Flagstaff House is going about crafting a modern, civilized conditions of service package for not only the striking GMA doctors but for all public healthcare providers in the country.
Mr. Gamey may be either senile or simply cognitively dissonant to think that the loss of precious human lives engendered by the GMA strike was unilaterally caused by the latter and, therefore, rather than hold a grossly irresponsible government to account, the alleged labor consultant prefers to blame the victims.
If he is as honest as he would have the rest of us believe, Mr. Gamey would also tell us exactly how much he got paid for the arrant inanities he has been spewing in the media since the GMA doctors decided to take off their overalls and stethoscopes.
Then also, why is this self-befuddled labor consultant, so-called, not telling his audience about the responsibilities that the government has towards its employees throughout the country; and also whether he thinks the government has diligently and responsibly fulfilled its part of the bargain, and how so. I also doubt it when Mr. Gamey says that he is in agreement with the need for all employees to be afforded decent conditions of service. To be certain, I was shocked to learn that our doctors have not had any codified service conditions for how long is anybody’s good guess.
Indeed, the first thought that entered my mind was whether this had been the case during the 8 years that President John Agyekum-Kufuor held the fort, as it were. We must also remind Mr. Gamey that even as the GMA’s President, Dr. Adusei-Poku, recently reminded the public, the Mahama government has been on notice about the possibility of an industrial action by the members of the GMA since November last year.
And so it quite clearly appears that our doctors were not going to be taken seriously, until they also demonstrated that their lives were as precious as those of the people they were trained to save and make comfortable, including the lives of President Mahama and his cabinet appointees and hangers-on.