The Transport Department of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has warned the operations of the service could be badly affected if management fails to absorb the over 200 of temporary drivers who are not on payroll.
Out of the 994 drivers at the service, 734 representing 74 per cent are permanent whiles 260 representing 26 per cent are temporary and not on payroll.
The service also has a total of 1630 vehicles with about 52 per cent being out of service.
This was revealed at the 3rd National Delegate Conference of the Health Service Drivers Association of Ghana in Kumasi.
In his speech, the Deputy Director in charge of Transport at the GHS, Ebo Hammond, expressed worry the development could have dire implications for the service if not addressed.
“When you come to driver statistics, the GHS has 994 drivers and out of that we have 76 per cent being permanent and 24 per cent being casual and that is a big problem. Almost 30 per cent of our drivers are not on pay roll. If they are not on pay roll it has implications,” he stated.
“One time, one of our temporary drivers while driving our vehicle had an accident. After the accident the driver bolted away, we could not find him again but if he were a permanent driver, there was no way he could run away. So if we keep almost a quarter of our drivers as not fully employed, it has implications for us. As many as 216 drivers in the health service are not employed but if the hospitals and the districts also don’t pick such temporary drivers, the health service would have been constrained. And with temporary drivers, their financial future is not secured an then at the end of the day motivation is not there,” he added.
Mr Hammond also called on the Ministry of Health to relook at the policy to give ambulances only to the National Ambulance Service.
“There was a policy that ambulances will not be allocated to hospitals and that they will be allocated to only the National Ambulance Service…I will say that that policy has not helped. A recent research in obstetric care shows that the health service drivers are still moving more than 50 per cent of all patients that need referral and these referrals are being done in pickups and vehicles that are not appropriate for service delivery. And so hospitals are now having problems…because there are no ambulances in the health service then the problem is that when it comes to patient referral and emergency care, Ghana is not covered,” he said.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
