At least 20,000 nurses are still sitting at home nationwide awaiting financial clearance and posting to health facilities where their services are critically needed.

This is contained in a press statement issued to Starr News by the Coalition of Unemployed Nurses (CUN) following a recent financial clearance and posting of some 14,001 nurses and midwives across the country’s 16 regions.

“We would like to use this medium to remind government and the Ministry of Health that about 730 [of the] 2016 batch of Nurses Assistant Preventive (NAP) and Nurses Assistant Clinical (NAC) and 500 Registered General Nurses (RGN) and resit nurses were not captured on the financial clearance and are still at home.

“The 2017 batch of nurses with a total number of about 20,000 are yet to be given financial clearance. We are pleading on government and the Ministry of Health to as a matter of urgency release the financial clearance to these groups of nurses on time in order to avoid psychological trauma that the previous batches were taken through by government,” said the statement.

It added: “We are calling on all our colleagues who were not given clearance to remain calm and resolute as we await official communiqué from the Ministry of Health in that regard. Follow-ups would be made to ascertain the way forward if the ministry remains mute and plays deaf to the issues at hand.”

The statement, endorsed by the coalition’s representatives in the Upper East region, was co-signed by three of the union’s Upper East regional executive members— the Convenor, Paul Selorm; the Press Secretary, Rashid Akugri; and the Organiser, George Asuah.

Coalition thanks the Press and the President

The coalition, however, thanked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the recent placement of some of its members and also expressed appreciation to the media houses that stood by the unemployed nurses and midwives throughout their past public protests.

“The Coalition of Unemployed Nurses wishes to express our sincere gratitude to the President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Ministry of Health for clearing and posting the 2016 Nurses Assistant Preventive (NAP), Nurses Assistant Clinical (NAC) and the 2016 registered general nurses and midwives. We believe that the government has done a quarter of what we have been waiting for all this while and wish they would speed up the necessary arrangements to ensure the remaining half and quarter work is completed as far as we unemployed nurses are concerned.

“We would like to use this opportunity to congratulate all 2016 nurses and midwives who have been successfully cleared and posted to give their services to the nation in our various hospitals across the country. We thank our untiring media houses for their stance and support towards all our activities to ensure our freedom and success during the days of demonstration and picketing on the road and around the Ministry of Health, not forgetting our parents and all concerned Ghanaians who shared our plight with us,” its statement said.