Students of the School of Hygiene (SoH) across the country have embarked on a peaceful demonstration owing to the government’s refusal to restore their allowances.
They accused the Nana Akufo-Addo led government of reneging on its promise to restore the allowances of students of the School of Hygiene across the country.
They explained that the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has restored the allowances of nurses, midwives and allied health trainees, but failed to restore that of students in School of Hygiene as contained in the 2016 manifesto of the party.
They alleged that since the government does not want to pay them their allowances, it has intentionally moved them from the Ministry of Health to Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources to deprive them of their allowances.
They therefore warned that if the government does not restore their allowances as promised, all students in Ho, Accra and Tamale Schools of Hygiene would go on an indefinite sit-down strike.
Petition
Presenting a petition to the Volta Regional Coordinating Council, the Secretary of the Students’ Representative Council of Ho SOH, Kweku Afful, narrated that student leaders and principals of the three schools of hygiene participated in a stakeholders’ forum organised by the Ministry of Health in August 2017 on the restoration of the allowances.
At the forum, all parties presented bank details, ezwich accounts and other documents in anticipation of the payment of the allowances, however not a single student has received a penny.
Several petitions to the Ministry of Water and Sanitation and Ministry of Health have yielded no positive results.
In an earlier statement, the National Association of Hygiene Students, said the petitions sent to the two ministries, as well as the Finance Ministry and the Presidency on 8th November, 2017, to rectify the problems have also not yielded any results.
“We have realized that we are being taken for granted and have decided to embark on a peaceful demonstration to persuade the ministries to address our issue. We would proceed to embark on a sit-down strike if they fail to resolve the issue to our satisfaction.”
The Deputy Volta Regional Minister, Maxwell Blagodzi, who received the petition on behalf of the President, assured the aggrieved students that their concerns would be channeled to the relevant authorities for redress.
From Fred Duodu and Collins Anku, Ho (k.duodu@yahoo.com)