Ministry recruits 15,200 nurses, midwives - Process starts Monday
The Ministry of Health will, from Monday, August 5, 2024, begin the recruitment of 15,200 nurses and midwives to man the various health facilities across the country.
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This is after the Ministry of Finance granted clearance for the recruitment of health professionals.
But the Minority Caucus in Parliament has labelled the decision to recruit nurses and midwives at this time an election gimmick intended to deceive and sway voters, with just over four months to the polls.
In line with the recruitment process, the ministry has advised qualified applicants to submit their applications through the Ministry of Health's online portal. Applicants are required to log in and follow the instructions to select their preferred agency under the ministry.
The deadline for submission of applications is Friday, August 23, 2024.“Qualified applicants are requested to formally apply on the Ministry of Health online application portal by logging in onto https://hr.moh.gov.gh and follow the instructions to select the preferred agency under the ministry,” a statement signed by the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health, Alhaji Hafiz Adam, said.
Transparent
According to the ministry, the recruitment process was transparent and warned applicants against individuals who might approach them with promises of assistance at a fee. It said applicants should take note that no payment was required for the process, and that "whoever pays money does so at his/her own risk".
“Applicants should, therefore, be aware of any person who may approach them on the pretext of assisting them for recruitment at a fee,” the statement said. The recruitment drive, the ministry said, aimed to augment the healthcare workforce and improve service delivery in the country's health facilities.
Prospective applicants are encouraged to apply through the official online portal to avoid falling victim to fraudulent agents. The ministry advised applicants who needed more information to visit the ministry's official website or contact the Public Relations Unit.
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Minority’s reaction
Meanwhile, the Minority in Parliament has labelled the government’s decision to recruit 15,200 nurses and midwives as an electioneering strategy to deceive graduate nurses.
“Although this comes as welcome news after several unanswered calls on government to recruit qualified healthcare graduates into the Ghana Health Service, the Minority is of the view that the recruitment should be at the very least a predictable annual affair that feeds into a broad framework of consistently delivering quality health service for Ghanaians,” it said.
Giving an address in Parliament yesterday (July 29), the Ranking Member on Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, Kwabena Mintah Akando, said the opening was a strategy to deceive the nurses who had suffered years of unemployment.
Political gimmick
He said the political gimmickry with recruitment into the GHS had precedence which could be cited. During the first term of this government, he said, general recruitment of health workers, especially nurses and midwives, was deferred to the period spanning November 4 to 15 of 2020, a few weeks to elections as part of a broad campaign strategy.
Once voted into office, Mr Akando — who is also the Member of Parliament for Juaboso Constituency — said, health service graduates had to suffer a similar fate of waiting for four years to be recruited, thus, resulting in poor healthcare delivery service owing to a high attrition of highly skilled healthcare workers without replacement from 251,527 in 2021 to about 182,233 in 2023.
“The human resource management of the GHS under this government has been nothing but abysmal to say the least. Payment of nursing trainee allowance in most cases was non-existent with some cohort of nurses trainees being owed as much as 27 months and counting.
“For those who graduated and embarked on their rotation, he said allowances meant to sustain them during their rotational services were predictably delayed for months after the year-long rotation without reason or explanation.
Mr Akando said in 2020, the government, as part of its campaign strategy, opened recruitment portals for the recruitment of nurses, midwives and pharmacists, pharmaceutical doctors and other healthcare workers only to give them appointments with effective dates starting in the year after the election.
He said this year’s recruitment was limited to nurses and midwives and, therefore, raised concern about the welfare of other healthcare workers who were currently unemployed and waiting for government to recruit them into the service.
Advice
“Minority will, therefore, want to advise all graduate health workers not to be hoodwinked by these last-minute political gimmicks, tricks and machinations into believing that recruitment will be handled better going forward.
“Minority, therefore, calls on graduating health workers and those who are currently in school to choose a government that will implement a robust annual recruitment strategy that ensures timely and consistent employment of healthcare professionals instead of once in four years partisan campaign recruitment that makes health workers disoriented and uncertain about when they will be employed,” Mr Akandoh said.
Rotational nurses
Recently, the rotational nurses and midwives urged the Ministry of Health to employ all qualified nurses and midwives from the 2020, 2021 and 2022 batches to make effective use of “our acquired skills” and meet the healthcare needs of the country.
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In a statement issued in Accra on July 17, 2023, the group, representing over 11,000 nurses and midwives who had completed their one-year mandatory national service from July 2023 to June 2024, said it wished “to bring to the attention of the Ministry of Health, the government and the general public the severe hardships we have endured due to the delayed issuance of financial clearance and consequent non-payment of our allowances”.
The association comprises registered general nurses, registered midwives, registered public health nurses and registered mental health nurses, who have successfully completed their school training.
The group said in the past 12 months, they had been working in various health facilities across the country, providing essential healthcare services.