Health Professionals Must Look for Jobs and not Posted – GHS boss proposes

Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has emphatically said that, the rightful thing to be done is allowing health professionals after their studies look for jobs instead of being posted.

Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare said the continuation of posting renders the good operation of the health department.

Speaking at the opening of the Annual Conference of the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region, he called for an urgent solution to staffing problems in the country.

“The present bottlenecks in ensuring that all staffing of existing health facilities simply has to be tackled now, not tomorrow. I am urging your conference to come out pragmatic measures to address this long-standing challenge in the sector,” he said.

“I believe we should stop postings, we should allow every health worker to go and look for a job,” Dr Nsiah Asare suggested.
He explained that if the proposal is adopted, the Health Service will announce the vacancies in the respective regions of the country for the health professionals to apply for the positions, go through the interview process and if they are picked they start work.
It is common to see unemployed health workers picketing at the Health Ministry to demand postings. Government over the years has struggled to deal with this challenge.

In February this year, the government told graduate nurses to stop picketing at the Ministry as plans are far advanced to employ them.

The Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid, said the Finance Ministry has given clearance for them to be employed. He, however, did not state specifically which month they will be engaged.

“This year, government is employing 32,000 health professionals, and out of that 27,000 are nurses.”