Graduate unemployed Nurses and Midwives have staged a protest on the streets of Tamale in the Northern Region, vehemently expressing frustration with their current predicament.
The group is registering its dissatisfaction primarily with the government and its agencies, specifically the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) over the perceived failure of these entities to grant financial clearance and secure permanent employment for more than 75,000 graduate nurses and midwives who have undergone training at various accredited public universities and training colleges.
The professionals have successfully passed their Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) licensing exams.
The aggrieved nurses are calling on the government to clear the backlog of nurses and midwives from 2020, 2021, and 2022 who are awaiting their postings to serve the country.
The group asserts that qualified nurses and midwives remain unemployed, while the government and its agencies have overlooked them in favour of employing unqualified individuals, such as senior high school graduates, who undergo minimal training to practice in healthcare wards.
“The Nursing and Midwifery Council is mandated by the Health Professional Regulatory Act to secure, in the public’s interest, the highest training and practice for nurses and midwives in this country. If I have been trained and inducted and sit home for close to four years, where then lies their mandate?” one nurse, Abdul Rauf, questioned what the NMC is doing to alleviate their plight.
“Nurses should not do their rotation for close to a year before their allowances are released, nurses should not sit in the house for so many years before they are posted, nurses should not picket before they are posted, and believe it or not, throughout the world, nurses are the backbone of every country,” another nurse lamented.
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