The Ministry of Health will reconsider the bonding of trainee nurses to address challenges with posting after school.
The said amendment, according to Deputy Minister of Health Tina Mensah, will allow the private sector to employ some nurses after school and alleviate a backlog of unemployed nurses after school.
Ms Mensah’s comment comes on the heels of pressure from members of the Coalition of Unemployed Bonded Diploma Nurses on the Ministry to effect their financial clearance so they can be posted two years after they graduated.
The nurses picketed the premises of the Ministry and passed the night there on Monday 24 April and have threatened to March to the seat of government if the Ministry does not give them clearance to be posted to the various health institutions to begin work.
However, speaking to Class News, Ms Mensah said it was time the Ministry reviewed the policy of bonding nurses.
“All these things are happening because they have been bonded and I think it’s about time that bonding thing is reviewed because a lot of people have finished university and are still at home not getting anything to do and where do they go to hold people for not getting them jobs?” she quizzed.
“Maybe there was a time we needed to bond them but everything, at a certain time, you need to review it. If the system was ‘you go to school, you are not bonded, you finish, you find work,’ I don’t think what is happening here today would be happening here. But in the interim we will by all means [post] them to their various places…”
The Weija Gbawe lawmaker reiterated government’s commitment to post the nurses. “We are committed because government is committed to getting jobs for the jobless, so how much more somebody who has completed nursing and you are going to waste the person. If we are not committed we wouldn’t have gotten clearance for such a large number of people,” she added
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