The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has called for the immediate dismissal of the Ashanti Regional National Service Scheme (NSS) Director, Alex Opoku Mensah.
Agitated members of GRNMA have issued a 72-hour ultimatum for his dismissal, or they will lay down their tools.
According to GRNMA, Mr Opoku-Mensah attacked a nurse at post at the Manhyia Government Hospital in Kumasi.
This comes after an audio recording emerged from the Manhyia District Hospital in the Ashanti Region, which captured a male voice purported to be that of Mr Opoku-Mensah, raining insults on a nurse.
The attack was reportedly in response to the alleged intimidation of her daughter, who is undergoing her medical housemanship, by the said nurse.
In a statement from the GRNMA dated November 29, 2022, the leadership of the association has called on the government to sack the NSS Director “having considered the audio and the report received from our Ashanti Regional branch.”
“Public Services Commission and Government, for that matter, should sack the said regional director immediately because he is not fit for the director position he holds in the Public Service. He had absolutely NO RIGHT to enter Manhyia District Hospital and verbally abuse and threaten the nurse in question, who was on duty at the time.
“As a director, he should have known that Manhyia District Hospital had a Medical Superintendent and a Nurse Manager under whom the nurse works, and if indeed he had any complaint to make, they were the people he should have engaged and not to go to the hospital and fight the nurse on behalf of his daughter,” the statement said.
Therefore, the GRNMA threatened a nationwide strike if the government fails to act.
“We wish to state categorically that if the government does not relieve Mr Alex Poku Mensah of his duty as Ashanti Regional Director of the National Service Scheme within 72 hours, nurses and midwives of Manhyia Hospital will be called upon to lay down their tools, followed by the whole of Ashanti Region and then it will be escalated to the whole nation.”
Read the statement below