We Will Hit The Streets Soon If You Do Not Pay Us Our Allowances – Trainee Nurses and Midwives To Government
The Ghana Nurses and Midwife Trainees’ Association, has threatened to embark on a nationwide demonstration if the government does not pay eight months of outstanding allowances owed its members.
As a campaign promise for the 2016 general elections, then-candidate Akufo-Addo promised to restore the allowances when given the mandate. He since restored it as promised. This is after the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration scrapped it on the basis that it had outlived its usefulness and that the students could access student loans just like other tertiary students.
The National Secretary of the Ghana Nurses and Midwife Trainees’ Association, Lambert Nsobilla, said attempts to get the Health Ministry to pay them have proved futile.
“We are at the peak of writing exams and a lot of our members depend on the allowances to pay their school fees and their inability to do that will stop them from writing exams. The allowance was one of the promises this government made to us in the round up to the 2016 election, and they did their best to fulfil it to some extent. The last payment was made in November 2020, but they were the payments for March, April, and May 2020. So since May 2020, Allowances have come to a halt. The government promised us monthly allowance payments but haven’t fulfilled them. Also before the payments were halted there was no defined method. Sometimes they pay after three, four, or five months.”
“We are not only going to say that this will be the last resort, if it will take conferences, walking on the streets to cry to government for the over GHS56,000 we are owed we will do just that,” he stated.
Trainee nurses and midwives have in the past complained about the non-payment of their allowances by the government, despite assurances that the allowances which were scrapped in the erstwhile National Democratic Congress administration had been restored.
Back In 2018 trainee nurses threatened to boycott classes over the same issue. That pushed government to release GHS33 million to clear the arrears.
Other health student groups who were also promised the restoration of their allowances, including students in the various schools of hygiene had to picket at the Ministry of Health before their concerns were addressed.
By: Stella Annan | myactiveonline.com Twitter @activetvgh
