Tamale: Unemployed nurses, midwives protest over delayed postings

The Graduate Unemployed Nurses and Midwives Association (GUNMA) has taken to the streets of Tamale in protest of their unemployment situation.

The group is strongly expressing its discontent towards the government and its agencies, namely the Ministry of Health (MoH) and Ministry of Finance (MoF), for their failure to provide financial clearance and permanent employment to over 75,000 graduate nurses and midwives trained 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