40,000 NURSES TO BE EMPLOYED IN NEXT FEW MONTHS - RM 14th Mar., 2019

One of the major challenges graduates from Ghana’s Health Training Institutions often faced especially the nursing crop of graduates, is the long years of waiting for intake by the Ghana Health Service [GHS] after the successful completion of their courses. But this problem will soon become history as the Upper East Regional Minister, Hon. Paulina Patience Abayage, announced this Wednesday that, as much as 40,000 nurses will be employed in the next months.

Upper East Reg. Min., Hon. Abayage speaking at CHNTC -N

The Regional Minister made the announcement in an interface meeting with students of the Navrongo Community Health Nurses’ Training College [CHNTC-N] on day two of her familiarisation tours to some selected tertiary institutions across the region. She added that the Ministry of Health and for that matter, authorities of the GHS had been given clearance to recruit and deploy various grades of nurses to beef up the staff strength at health facilities across the country. According to her, the recruitment portal operated by the authorities was opened for entries and that interviews and other processes will follow immediately afterwards.

She charged the nursing trainees to accept postings to any part of the country stressing that as professionals trained with the tax payers’ money, they were obliged to serve the people no matter the region and community they were posted to. Meanwhile she also urged the trainees to learn to complement the efforts of government by taking good care of school property and facilities at their disposal while contributing financially where need be, to help school authorities maintain or service equipment and logistics used for their training.

Hon. Abayage also appealed to students and parents to do everything possible to pay their fees and other academic levies as she explained that, it would be difficult for government to fix the host of problems on the campuses if students reneged on the payment of approved school fees. She urged the trainees to take their studies seriously emphasising that “as students, you must set your priorities right”.

Meanwhile responding to concerns raised by the trainees that they had not received their allowances for about seven months, Madam Abayage gave them the strongest assurance that, resources were being mobilised in order to clear those arrears owed them. She based this on the fact that, she had held a similar engagement with teacher trainees at the St. John Bosco’s College of Education earlier in the day, and those students had recently received their allowances in arrears. She explained further that, it takes a lot of paper work and bureaucracies to get these things sorted out and thus appealed to the students to exercise patience. 

A Cross Section of Nursing Trainees at CHNTC-Navrongo

In a meeting earlier with staff of the school before engaging the students, Administrator of the school Mr. Sumani Inusah appealed to the Regional Minister to assist the school in the areas of new lecture halls, a male hostel and the drilling of a borehole on the campus to meet the water needs of the nursing trainees. While the Regional Minister promised to do the little she could to solve some of the school’s problems, she advised the authorities to submit a written request to the sector ministry as some of the financial implications were above the reach of the Regional Coordinating Council.

The Navrongo Community Health Nurses Training College has a student population of 608 comprising Diploma and Certificate nursing trainees. The school runs programmes including Registered Community Nursing, Registered Nursing Assistant Preventive and BSc. Public Health Nursing. The school’s authorities say, but for quota limitations, they could admit as many as 1000 students.

Nurse Trainees at the Bolga NTC

The Regional Minister and her team made up of the Regional Coordinating Director, Alhaji Assibi Azonko, the Regional Security Liaison Officer, Col. Rtd. Boscos Anyasombe and representatives from the Upper East Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service among others, inspected some ongoing and stalled projects at the St. John Bosco’s College of Education as part of the tour. These included a 150-capacity auditorium, the college’s fence wall and main gate projects and some two uncompleted departmental offices. The Minister pledged to hold discussions with the respective awarding agencies in order to bring the contractors back to site to complete the projects in question.

The Stalled 150-seater Auditorium At Bosco's College of Edu.

It also came to light that the teacher-training College had a total student population of 1,240 comprising 324 Level 100 students, 417 Level 200 students and 499 Level 300 trainees. It has a teaching staff strength of 58 and that of non-teaching staff, 56.

In a related development, the Minister and her team also interacted with authorities of the Navrongo Campus of the University for Development Studies where she gave assurance to the authorities and student body that, government will push through with the necessary legislation needed to complete the upgrading of the campus into an autonomous University. She also took time to inspect a completed auditorium at the University whose tiled floor had begun deteriorating even before its formal handing over, a situation she insisted must be corrected by the contractor before the hand-over.

The Bolgatanga Midwifery Training College, the Zuarungu Midwifery and Nurses’ Training College as well as the Bolgatanga Nurses’ Training College were also visited and the authorities of these schools also briefed the Regional Minister and her team bringing to light both success stories and problems confronting the institutions.