Government through the Ministry of Health (MoH) has released a total amount of GH¢198,200,000.00 for the payment allowances for trainee nurses.
The amount is the final part of the payment of the nurses’ allowance from September 2018 to June 2019, for all trainees in public health training institutions.
The amount which was released on Thursday, August 8, 2019 is in fulfillment of the government’s commitment to the restoration of the Nursing Trainee allowance in 2017.
Each trainee nurse received an amount of GH¢ 400.00 for 10 months in each academic year to support their academic and clinical work.
The Ministry of health in a statement to announce the release of the funds, said it was working assiduously to ensure that trainees who could not receive their allowances owing to challenges with their Ezwich cards are paid immediately.
“Trainees who may have other challenges with the payment of the allowance are kindly advised to contact the Heads their schools for redress,” the statement signed by its Chief Director, Nana Kwabena Adjei-Mensah said.
Deploying the cancellation of the allowances, in 2014, President Akufo-Addo asserted that the action brought untold hardships to the thousands of nurses and midwives in the country, who depended on it for their studies and for their welfare.
Background
The introduction of trainee allowances originally started in the country with training colleges that were attached to some secondary schools with the intention of motivating more students to pursue teacher training education.
Later, nurse/midwife trainees allowance was also introduced to encourage more people to study nursing and midwifery courses, and this continued until the 2013/14 academic year when the policy was abolished by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
In the run-up to the 2016 general election, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) promised to restore the allowance, if voted into power, to serve as a motivation to attract more people to attend nursing colleges and colleges of education.
The restoration of the allowance is, therefore, in fulfilment of the NPP government’s 2016 campaign promise.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri