Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman Manu has announced series of new measures to deal with the bribery and corruption in the admission process into nursing training colleges.
The Minister is introducing an online application system and has set an investigative team to look into admission fraud reports.
Addressing a news conference in the Central Region, the Minister said the online application system will allow for transparency in the sale of nursing school forms and the admission process by extension.
“Internally generated funds raised after the sale of the forms could not be tracked and so this year we decided to do everything online”, he said.
The Ministry ceased all sales of the nursing forms in early 2017 and introduced the online sale of the forms on April 3rd, 2017.
Applicants were required to buy a GH?100-voucher from either the Ghana Commercial Bank or the Agricultural Development Bank for the online application.
The cost of application forms for the 2017/2018 Academic Year was reduced from GH¢160.00 to GH¢100.00.
The Ministry revealed there will be no hidden charges like the cost of verification of results and the sale of EMS Envelope as all notifications would be done via online and through text messages.
Also students will only need to provide the index numbers and WAEC would provide verified results on the forms.
Mr. Manu added the fraudulent acts were pervasive stating some of the forms sold in post offices were yet to be accounted for.
“What came up was there were efforts by some people we couldn’t easily track trying to sell the previous year’s forms”.
He explained that the Ministry had to warn students against such people selling the 2016 forms in the public domain as those forms were not going to be used in 2017.
Mr. Manu said he is determined to ensure that admissions are based on merit.
He also added that the introduction of an online application system and an investigative team will assist the Ministry in looking into admission fraud.
Source:Myjoyonline