Reconsider your decision to sack 15, 200 newly recruited nurses and midwives – GRNMA to govt
The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has urged the government to reconsider its decision to revoke the appointment of some 15, 200 newly recruited nurses and midwives.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS), in a circular dated February 12, 2025, directed all divisional and regional health directors to suspend newly recruited nurses who had not yet been placed on the payroll as of January 2025.
This move, according to the GRNMA, suggests that the Chief of Staff’s directive is already being implemented, raising concerns over its immediate impact on healthcare delivery.
But the GRNMA has called on the government to exclude newly recruited nurses from its directive suspending all public service appointments made after December 7, 2024.
The association has warned that if the directive affects its members, it will initiate a series of industrial actions in solidarity with the affected nurses.
Speaking in an interview Daakyehene Ofosu Agyemang, Host of New York-based Adinkra Radio, the Public Relations Officer of the GRNMA, Joseph Krampah stressed that newly recruited nurses and midwives said their request to the government is to allow the new staff to remain at post, as they form the majority of Ghana’s healthcare workforce and are crucial to the functioning of the health system.
“What we are proposing is that the government should allow the staff to work while investigations are ongoing. We shouldn’t let them go home because we need a lot of nurses and midwives in our health sector. The patient to nurse ratio in this country is not encouraging. A stressed health professional cannot give off his or her best. So if these young nurses and midwives have been recruited and working to lesson the burden on the already over stretched health personnel and the government is insisting that it will still revoke their appointments then we will advise ourselves.
He added “We have made our position clear to the government, if it will not listen to us, then we shall lay down our tools, and then when they are done with the investigations we all resume work. A total of 15, 200 nurses and midwives who have been posted are to be sent home. We will embark on a strike not that we nurses and midwives are happy laying down our tools, but we want the government to know how essential we are as health workers.”
Source Adinkraradio.com