The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed that the government will recruit up to 10,000 unemployed nurses and health assistants through the Nation Builders’ Corps which will be launched on May 1, 2018.
He said government is working with the Ministry of Health to recruit the many health professionals who have completed their professional training but have been idle for several months.
Bawumia, who was speaking at the 2018 Annual Health Summit in Accra, said the health workers will be engaged for up to 3 years under the health module of the Nation Builders’ Corps.
He said the nurses will be posted to serve in various communities that are without professional health workers.
“We also are very cognizant of the importance of making sure there is adequate staffing of the medical facilities. We have 7 models for the national builders’ corps and one of the modules is the health model. We have quite a number of nurses and health assistants who are sitting at home. They’ve qualified for years and they have not been engaged,” he said.
“We have engaged the GHS and we will be prepared to recruit up to 10,000 nurses and health assistants to be part of the nation builders’ corps to have contracts of up to 3 years so that we can post them to areas where they are needed,” he added.
The Vice President said the government was undertaking various processes to make health services available to all communities in the country especially those that are under-served.
He said the government would among other things deploy the use of drone technology for the supply of medicine and blood to remote communities in the country.
Jobless nurses in Ghana
Thousands of professionally trained nurses and health assistants have staged various protests in the country over their unemployment several years and months after completion of their training.
Although the Ministry of Health has given assurances that they will be employed, very few of them have been employed.
Most of them are still at home unemployed because they are bonded, and will need to serve in the public health sector before they can later be employed by private health facilities.
Bonded unemployed nurses, midwives protest over delayed posting
Just yesterday [Monday], some frustrated bonded unemployed nurses and midwives demonstrated in Tamale over government’s failure to post them.
The licensed health professionals say they can no longer tolerate government’s assurances, hence the street protest.
They have thus given government a two-week ultimatum to address their concern or else they will picket at the Ministry of Health and the Jubilee House.
Source: citinewsroom.com