Gov’t Clears 541 Health Professionals for Posting

Junior Doctors can expect to start work in March 2018, following the government’s granting of financial clearance to 541 healthcare professionals.

Some 206 trained junior doctors have spent almost seven months at home without being posted over delays in financial clearance by the Ministry of Finance.

The doctors had renewed calls to the government to urgently resolve the perennial issues that surround their absorption into the public health system.

The Ghana Medical Association also criticized government over their failure to resolve the matter.

A Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in a Citi News interview, noted that “on January 10, we gave financial clearance for the first batch of 194 medical officers and they are going to start work from the first of March 2018. Their appointment cannot be earlier than March 1, 2018.”

The second batch of 347 health personnel was given clearance on January 17.

“Junior Doctors were about 150. About 6 midwives, 102 physician assistants, 42 field technicians, some optical technicians, technical officers and senior trainees. We also included financial clearance for about 30 healthcare professionals to go to the mental authority,” Mr. Oppong Nkrumah outlined.

The Information Minister added that “there will be a bit more [personnel cleared] as we go along.”

245 jobless doctors get financial clearance after Citi FM’s ‘intervention’

In 2017, following Citi FM’s intervention, the Ministry of Finance cleared some 245 doctors after six months of being unemployed.

The commitment of the government to absorbing these doctors, and healthcare in general, was questioned when one of the doctors wrote to Citi FM conveying the frustration of the jobless doctors who appear ready to serve the country.

Other health officials have in the past few months protested at the Ministry of Health to either be posted to health facilities or get financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance.