Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur
Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has yet again defended government’s decision to scrap allowances for trainee nurses in the country.
According to him, any attempt to restore the allowances will have negative consequences on the quality of education provided to trainee nurses.
Speaking at the Nalerigu Nursing and Midwifery College while on a campaign tour of the Northern Region, Mr. Amissah Arthur explained that, the decision to discontinue the allowances for trainee nurses, has yielded positive results, including an increase in enrollment of students.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in 2015, scrapped the trainee nurses’ allowance, arguing that it was to allow the various nursing training institutions admit more trainees.
Although some trainees challenged government and called on it to rescind its decision, government has remained adamant, claiming the decision is in the best interest of country.
However, President Mahama recently announced that government would pay GH¢150 each in allowance to some 34,500 nursing students, per the recommendations of a committee set to look into the matter.
But the leadership of the trainee nurses said the amount was woefully inadequate as it was short of about GH¢250 of what they had been receiving previously.
Kwesi Amissah-Arthur while at the Nalerigu Nursing and Midwifery College said, “We want to invest some of the resources of this country for the future.
If I stand here and just say that the ‘alawa’ has been reintroduced, you will be happy and then we will go home; but then it will have an implication for the future…because it means that the school blocks that we want to build for the growing population, we may not be able to do it.”
The allowance system had been eliminated with trainees now having access to the Students Loan Scheme.
‘We’ll restore nursing and teacher trainees’ allowances’ Meanwhile, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said it will fully restore the scrapped allowances for trainee nurses and teachers, if voted into office in the upcoming elections.
-Citifmonline