Psychiatric patients at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital have been left to their fate as nurses and physician assistants abandon work from today, Thursday February 15.
The workers are angry with the Health Ministry for failing to sack their Medical Director whom they accuse of being abusive.
Several attempts by the Health Ministry to get the workers to back down on their demand has failed.
Spokesperson for the aggrieved workers, Emmanuel Ofori has stated that their decision to stay away from work is to make sure their lives are protected.
“We’re running away from danger, Labour Law 2003, section 119 states that and I paraphrase…when an employee finds himself in danger he should report it to his immediate supervisor and remove him/herself from danger, so that’s exactly what we’ve done. The presence of our Hospital Director and his behavior or his leadership style poses a threat to our psychological health and so we reported that to our immediate supervisor and we’re removing ourselves from the danger.
...”Its not going to be a pleasant issue, because we are talking about mentally ill patients we’re taking care of, we’re the nurses talking care of the patients and if we have imminent danger to our health we have to take care our our health as well. There will be no nurse virtually to take care of the mentally ill patients.”
