8, 000 jobless nurses petition President

Some 8, 000 public nurses and midwives, who completed training in November 2016, but are yet to be employed by government, have stormed Flag Staff House, pleading with the President, to intervene on their behalf.

 It follows failure of the Health Minister, Kweku Agyeman Manu, to heed a directive from President Nana Akufo-Addo last year to ensure that they were recruited.

The leadership of the Ghana Nurse Midwife Trainees’ Association (GNMTA), who presented the petition to Parliament on Thursday February 15, 2018, described their situation as a “public health concern”.

The group said, it was “Unhappy about government’s adamancy to employing the said batch, though they have spent more than a year at home”.

Below is their petition

A PETITION TO THE SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT ON THE ISSUE OF EMPLOYMENT OF TRAINED YET UNEMPLOYED NURSES AND MIDWIVES IN GHANA

The leadership of the Ghana Nurse Midwife Trainees’ Association (GNMTA) petitions your high office of the respectable 275 honourable members of parliament to as a matter of urgency spell out clearly to the good people of Ghana the modalities pertaining to the training, recruitment and engagement of trained nurses and midwives in our country Ghana.
The leadership of Ghana for the past eight years now, starting from the erstwhile NDC government, led by the former president H.E John Dramani Mahama and the current NPP government, led by H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo find it prudent to augment, by policy guidelines, the enrolment numbers of prospective students into health training institutions. However, both governments are lackadaisical when it comes to the engagement of graduate trained professional nurses and midwives licensed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana.
Nursing is one of the professions under which axis the nation strives. Nurses and Midwives are in the region of 70 per cent of the health care delivery team. However sadly, there are many areas in Ghana with no nurses and midwives to manage health care facilities that have been “built and abandoned” with the taxpayer’s money. It is important to note that nurses and midwives are trained with subventions from the government of Ghana. Therefore it amount to some wastage if trained nurses and midwives after training are not engaged to offer service to the nation but are allowed for their acquired knowledge and skills to decay with time.
As a basic psychological fact, when one is trained with skills and the person does not utilise the skills acquired, the skills is liable to decay and subsequently get lost completely. In some instances he or she ends up becoming a threat to lives of many innocent citizens in society. For instance if one is trained as a military or a police officer who per their training learns how to handle weapon and are left at home unemployed, they turn to become threats to the society when they decide to use the skills they have acquired to find their survival needs in the society by possibly joining or forming armed robbery gangs. The same applies to someone who has been trained with the skills of nursing and is left at home unengaged for an undue period. They become threat to our society in several conceivable ways.
Some of these people turn into ghetto abortion doctors who end up using unapproved methods for abortion and in the end causing many lives. It also becomes so life-threatening when these professionals are left at home for a long period of time for their skills to decay before they are employed to practice in our health facilities.
As leaders of the Ghana Nurse Midwife Trainees Association (GNMTA) who have the lives of every Ghanaian at heart, we see this as a matter of public health concern as its cascading effects cannot be stated.
For instance we currently have over Eight thousand public trained Health Assistant and Community Health nurses who completed their training far back November 2016 and are still at home unemployed meanwhile they have their Auxiliary Identification Number (AIN) issued by The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana which is subjected to annual renewal. This batch of trained nurses are part of the few batches that were unfortunate not to have benefited from the trainee allowance and have paid exorbitant school fees as well as rendering 40% health care delivery to mother Ghana in the form of clinical services without any renumeration during training.
However the leadership is unhappy about the government’s adamancy to employing the said batch though they have spent more than a year at home.
We are therefore by this petition appealing to parliament to advert their mind to the innocent loss of lives as result of inadequate staffing in our health facilities. A decisive modalities for recruiting, training and engaging trained nurses and midwives should be drawn to assuage the anxiety of the backlog of unemployed nurses and midwives as well as help prospective nurses and midwives to make an informed decision.
Below are some areas we look forward for parliament to consider in their deliberations in order to curb this problem once and for all.
1. Ask the Ministry of Health to recruit and train only the quantity of nurses that the sector can immediately engage right after training just as it is done in the military, police and immigration training institutions in this country to avoid these unengaged trained nurses and midwives metamorphosing into agents of social woes.
2. Prevent the Ministry of Health from implementing the policy of trained nurses and midwives professionals applying and attending interview for the job they have already applied, interviewed, trained and licensed for. This is because such move by the ministry when implemented will end up creating another room for bribery and corruption, nepotism and favouritism, extortion of money from innocent poor graduate nurses before offering them job as sometimes recorded in the recruitment processes into the nursing training colleges.
3. Parliament coming out with a bill to permit all qualified and licensed Nurses And Midwives to establish and operate a health care unit or facility such as licensed chemical or pharmaceutical shops without interference once he/she has such license from the nursing and midwifery council of Ghana and is left at home unemployed and is required by law to renew such license annually.
4. Parliament should direct the Ministry of Health to reintroduce the policy of nurses staying and working within their regions of training for a minimum of three (3) years before being allowed to take transfer out of such regions which we see as a means to deal with the problem of some health professionals not accepting postings into some regions in the country. This also means that before one applies to a particular school within a region to undergo training as a nurse automatically accepts the condition of working in the same region if so required.
5. Parliament should direct Ministry of Finance to be proactive when it comes to the issuance of financial clearance covering our health professional who have been trained to render health care services to the poor and innocent people of Ghana who cannot afford to travel outside this country to equally assess quality health care. This is because most cases of delayed engagement of these professional is always alluded to the fact that the Ministry of Finance always fail to release the financial clearance for them to be employed on time.
In conclusion, the leadership of the Ghana Nurse – Midwife Trainee’s Association (GNMTA) is ever ready for any stakeholder engagement and possible deliberation if so required to amicably ameliorate this canker.
It is our fervent hope that this petition meets the kind consideration of your highly respected office and to be laid to the floor of Parliament for further deliberation leading to enactment of a bill to address the above concerns once and for all.
GNMTA will continue to use the philosophy of dialogue and nonviolence to address the challenges of trainee nurses and midwives across the country.

Thank you.
Yours sincerely

BATIAH SEMI-ULAH SANTI.

WOYI DELADEM

(NATIONAL PRESIDENT) (NATIONAL SEC. GEN)

Cc.
THE MAJORITY LEADER OF PARLIAMENT.
THE MINORITY LEADER OF PARLIAMENT.
THE CHIEF OF STAFF (FLAGSTAFF HOUSE)
THE HON MINISTER OF HEALTH.
THE GRNMA PRESIDENT.

Source: otecfmghana.com/ Gyamerah Louis