Anglican Bishop appeals to Ghana Medical Association to end strike
The Bishop of the Koforidua Diocese of the Anglican Church, Rt. Rev. Francis Benjamin Quashie, has appealed to the striking members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to return to work for the sake of the sick and the poor to prevent avoidable deaths.
He also called on the Government to take the strike serious and help find a solution to it and advised political activists to stop calling the doctors names, explaining that , such names as “mass murderers “ and “charlatans “ are not helping the situation and appealed to all Ghanaians to be courteous to each other.
Bishop Quashie was speaking at a thanksgiving service organised at the Koforidua St. Peter’s Cathedral to climax the 30th anniversary of the Diocese on Sunday at Koforidua.
He said the 30 years of the Diocese has seen a lot of success and challenges but God had always seen the church through and urged the members not to allow the challenges to discourage them but rather motivate them to work harder.
Bishop Quashie said currently, the church needed ten additional reverend ministers and by the end of the year, many priests would be hitting the compulsory retirement age of 70 and therefore urged parents to encourage their wards to offer themselves for the priesthood.
He said to help reduce the dependency of the Church on the Sunday collections from the congregation, the church has installed machines to process the products of its Oil palm plantation in Kwabeng into palm oil and palm kernel oil for sale.
Bishop Quashie said, since 2005, the Church had been able to put in place the pension scheme of the Clergy to assure them of better living on their retirement and urged parishes to pay their contribution early.
In a speech read on behalf of the Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Ebenezer Okletey Terlarbi, he called on the church to collaborate with government to fight against moral decadence.
He observed that, when one individual or a group of people think they have the undisputable mandate to determine the political destiny of a people without giving them the right of choice, then the country could be heading for confusion.
Mr Terlarbi appealed to the Church to constantly and ceaselessly pray to God to see the country through another peaceful elections as he had always done.
Earlier in a sermon, the Most Rev. Dr Robert G. A. Okine, Archbishop of the Province of West Africa and the first Bishop of the diocese(rtd), observed that, most Ghanaians are often made to believe that independence or the victory of their political party at elections would end their problems.
Therefore, when faced with the slightest challenge, they become disillusioned and urged the congregation not to be discouraged by failures but rather they should allow it to motivate them to work harder.
He paid tribute to all those people who had kept the work of the diocese going for the past 30 years .
Source: GNA