Employ 41,000 Graduate Nurses As You Promised – Minority Tells Akufo-Addo

The Minority in Parliament is holding the feet of the Akufo-Addo government to the fire of accountability by asking that the President’s direct promise to employ a batch of graduate nurses immediately upon their graduation from school should be fulfilled.

In a press statement signed by the Minority’s Ranking Member on the Select Committee on Health, Kwabena Minta Akandoh, President Akufo-Addo was reminded that the batch of nurses who graduated in 2017 and 2018, and now find themselves in an association called the Graduate Unemployed Nurses and Midwives Association (GUNMA) had been promised by him that they would immediately be employed upon graduation.

“It is instructive to note that this particular group of Nurses were not paid their Nursing training allowances as promised by the President Nana Akuffo Ado while they were in school.

“The President   Nana Akuffo Addo and his Vice President, Dr. Mahmudu Bawumia at separate meetings with the nurses, urged them to forfeit their Nursing Training allowances in lieu of immediate employment.

“We therefore find it unfortunate that since meeting with the President, Nana Akuffo Ado and his Vice President and many other meetings held with other Government officials, Government have failed to provide the promised immediate employment for which they forfeited their promised training allowances,” Hon. Akandoh’s statement said.

It stated the number of the nurses as 41,000 with the breakdown consisting of Diploma – 2017 August t=9800;  Diploma – 2018 February =1500; Certificate – 2017 =16000 and Certificate – 2018 =14000.

The statement expressed unhappiness that the group had been brutalized by the Police when the recently attempted to picket at the Health Ministry.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Health sector is a very sensitive one and so policies and programs in the sector should be a holistic one. To be able to employ more nurses and midwives and to provide better health care delivery means expanding the infrastructure in the health sector, hence the investment of over 1 billion USD in the health sector by the previous Mahama Administration.

“We will therefore at this point call on the President to expedite action on the uncompleted and abandoned health facilities littered across the country and also make the already completed ones fully operational. This will result in the creation of more vacancies to be able to absorb the unemployed nurses. 

“Finally, we are appealing to the President to fulfil the promises he made to this group of nurses to give them the immediate employment they deserve.”

Meanwhile the statement expressed surprise that up to 41,000 of the batch of graduate nurses remain unemployed while the Akufo-Addo government claims it has employed 50,000 nurses.

“…it is therefore bewildering that the Government that has consistently been claiming to have recruited over 50,000 nurses will be so exposed by the supposed beneficiaries of this recruitments,” the statement said.