Employing all 144,000 outstanding teachers, nurses will consume 47% of revenue — Labour Minister
The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Dr Abdul-Rashid Hassan Pelpuo, has said employing all the outstanding trained teachers and nurses awaiting government posting would consume nearly half of Ghana’s annual revenue.
There is currently a backlog of nurses waiting to be employed in the public sector. These are nurses who completed their training from the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 year groups.
In a radio interview with Accra-based Citi FM on Wednesday [Oct 8, 2025], Dr Pelpuo said the country was dealing with a backlog of 71,000 teachers and 73,000 nurses who have completed training but were yet to employed in the public sector.
“If we put the two together and decide not to add the security services or other ministries, it means they will take about 47 per cent of the total revenue we earn every year,” he said.
He explained that including other groups awaiting recruitment would push the wage bill to about 65 per cent of annual revenue, a level he described as a major fiscal risk.
Touching on the issue of the newly recruited teachers and nurses who have been protesting over unpaid salaries in the last nine months, Dr Pelpuo said the situation was inherited from the previous administration, which, he alleged, recruited people without financial clearance or adherence to proper procedures.
“For you to work and be paid, you need financial clearance to show there is money available and that you have been properly considered,” he said. “In many cases, that did not happen.”
According to him, a committee set up by the government to audit those recruitments uncovered irregularities, including cases where appointment letters were issued without interviews or even assigned workstations.
“In most instances, people were given letters without going through the process. No interviews, no designated office, nothing. They were just given letters,” he said.
The minister assured that the government would pay all legitimate workers who had served but were yet to receive their salaries.
“We are taking it up seriously, and I can assure the nurses and teachers caught up in this process that we will respond to them before the end of the year,” he stated. He added that the Minister of Finance had agreed to clear arrears after assessing the fiscal space.
Dr Pelpuo also said the government had suspended all layoffs until the committee completed its work, stressing that the president wanted fairness.
“The president does not want his administration to be clouded with disputes over who should be working and who should not,” he said. “He is insisting that the right thing is done.”
He dismissed claims that the government was broke, noting that the challenge was how to balance wage payments with debts.
“No matter how much money you have, the burden on the government to pay huge debts and arrears is heavy,” he said. “It is not about being broke. It is about managing capacity. Difficult as it is, we will get to the end of the road.”
