President John Mahama has defended his government’s decision to restore the allowances of nursing trainees till the end of the year.
Government scrapped the allowances to remove the restrictions on admission to the various training institutions.
This was in order to give more students the opportunity to gain admissions into these institutions.
However, the scrapping was met with resistance from some students who rely on the allowances to support themselves in school.
Speaking at the Nursing and Midwifery Training College at Kpembe in the Northern Region, President Mahama said his government will soon introduce an abated allowance scheme for the trainees.
“As the student loan is currently structured, it does not allow professional institutions like yours to be able to take advantage of the loan. And so we set up a committee to look at it and then it was decided that in the meantime that the student loan is not operational, we should reactivate an abated allowance scheme for you.”
“There are many of you if we did not do an abated allowance, there are a number of you who have been admitted in this school would have to be cut down. So the Ministry of Finance is working on that abated allowance and you will soon start receiving it. So ‘alawa’ is coming,” the President added.
President Mahama also used the opportunity to explain to the nursing trainees some of the projects being undertaken in the health sector.
“In the last few years, we have added 600,000 new hospital beds. It is estimated that for each hospital bed to take care of a patient, you need at least two nurses and so if you multiply six by two, that means 12,000 jobs for nurses.”
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