You Can’t Force Us to Post You – GHS to Picketing Graduates

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has criticised the growing trend of health professional graduates resorting to picketing at the Health Ministry to demand financial clearance and posting.

He said these aggrieved graduates cannot expect the government to employ when there is no budgetary allocation for them.

“There is nowhere in the world that somebody finishes school and says I am going to picket, sleep at the Ministry of Health and force them to take me whether they can pay me or cannot pay me.”

“…You don’t employ somebody if you don’t have money to pay or if the money is not readily available. If the person comes to work and you don’t pay the person, that one I will agree if the person comes to sleep and picket at the place where he was employed. If you are not being employed, why do you go and picket at the ministry’s car park? Is it done anywhere?” Dr. Nsiah-Asare said on Eyewitness News’ Point Blank segment.

Different classes of health professional graduates spanning as far back as 2015, have trooped to the Ministry of Health to demand clearance for posting into state health installations.

Most recently, in February, police personnel had to forcibly evict some 200 unemployed graduate nurses who pitched camp at the Health Ministry.

The government said it had provided financial clearance to 541 healthcare professionals who are expected to start work this March.

The government has also urged the graduate nurses to stop picketing at the Health Ministry as plans are far advanced to employ about 27,000 nurses.

More assurances

Dr. Nsiah-Asare reiterated the government’s commitment to the nurses and assured that more nurses will be employed by 2018 ending.

“We have use for every single nurse that has been trained in this country. We haven’t reached our nurse-to-population ration but because of our physical constraints… unfortunately, in this country, the government is the biggest employer of health professionals.”

He reminded that the “government took on over 16,000 or so nurses” and this year, the service “has put in the budgetary allocation to also employ nurses.”

Source: Citifmonline