The over one thousand junior physicians who have remained unemployed after completing their housemanship are reportedly beside themselves with frustration over their joblessness.
Dr. Justice Yankson, President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has confirmed that the doctors who have remained jobless because the Akufo-Addo government is unable to employ them are very disquiet.
According to him, the GMA itself too is very concerned about the situation.
“It’s something that is of concern to us and we have been working with the Ministry of Health and Finance to find a way out of the unfortunate arrangements in place currently. It all has to do with the issue of financial clearance and processes they will have to go through,” he noted.
According to Dr. Yankson the young doctors are especially getting frustrated and that if the situation is not resolved, most of them will soon join the long list of medical professionals who are leaving the country in brain drain.
More than 1,000 junior physicians have reportedly been compelled to stay home after completing their housemanship.
This has been confirmed by both the GMA and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.
According to reports, the main cause of the problem is the failure of the Ministry of Health to give financial clearance for their engagement.
NCA Directs Telcos to Prepare to Punish Persons Who Do Not Complete Sim Card Registration The National Communications Authority (NCA) has instructed Mobile Network Operators to begin rolling out sanctions against persons who are yet to completed the registration of their SIM cards.
In a 2 nd September, 2022 letter to the various telcos, the NCA directed those punitive measures be applied to unregistered customers in a phased manner after the 30 th September, 2022 deadline.
As part of the punitive measures, the NCA directed that outgoing calls be re-routed to IVR for a message to be played before all calls go through every day.
Additionally, it directed that outgoing calls and Data Services for a sequential batch of numbers will be blocked for 48 hours (2 days) once a week on rotational basis. “Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) shall divide the Unregistered SIMS into five (5) batches for the purpose of implementing this punitive measure.
“These measures shall exclude blocking of SMS to give defaulting subscribers the opportunity to initiate registration if they so wish.
“Subscribers who fully register their SIM Cards within the period they have been blocked will only be unblocked by the MNOs after the 48 hours to avoid the MNOs tampering with their systems intermittently,” the NCA said.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications has raised concerns about the directive from the NCA.
In a letter, it stated that “prior to the receipt of the Authority’s letter, all discussions were focused on barring/blocking of outgoing voice calls only, in line with which the Chamber’s members had adequately prepared to implement the measure in this regard and on subscribers who are yet to complete Stage 1; as discussions have been limited to this category of subscribers.”
It added that “As of September 3, 2022, customers had not been given any notice of the barring/ blocking of data service for 48 hours and outgoing calls from September 5, 2022, stressing that implementing these measures without adequate notice to customers will be a breach of our members’ standard license notice period, terms and conditions of service and could lead to customer backlash and reputation issues.”
It would be recalled that on the 31st of July, the Government extended the deadline for the SIM card re-registration to 30th September 2022. The government had initially set July 31 as the deadline for all persons to re-register their SIM cards with their Ghana Cards.