Francis Kwaku Wuni, the Upper East Regional Secretary of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA), says unity is the greatest asset of the Association, which must be upheld and protected.

“Unity is the greatest asset we have as a union, and we must all hold it high,” he said at the Bolgatanga Municipal launch of the Nurses and Midwives Week celebration.

The event, organised by the Municipal branch of the GRNMA, was on the theme: “Nurses and midwives, our future: Caring for nurses and midwives strengthens economies.”


Wuni, who addressed members on unionism and welfare issues, blamed the delay and non-implementation of their conditions of service agreement by their employer on the several breakaways and divisions within the nursing and midwifery professions.

“All health professionals have had their conditions of service agreements implemented except us. This would not have happened if we were united under the mother Association, GRNMA,” he said.

According to the Regional Secretary, politicians feared numerical strength and, therefore, took advantage of the division within the nursing and midwifery professions to delay the implementation of their conditions of service.

He recalled that before 1960, two unions within the professions existed — the Enrolled Nurses Union and the State Registered Nurses Union. “At the time, nursing was a vocation, and their salary could not buy even a bag of maize.

“It was so because once they were not united, they could not make strong demands for themselves. In their wisdom, they decided to come together and say ‘Unity is Strength,’ and that became the motto of the GRNMA,” he explained.

Touching on members’ conditions of service agreement, which had still not been implemented, Mr. Wuni said leadership had not relented in its follow-ups to have the employer implement the agreed conditions of service.

He expressed confidence in the national leadership of the Association to get their conditions of service agreement implemented and urged members to remain calm and allow leadership to handle the issue.

He further enumerated several benefits the GRNMA offered to members, including loans with 10 per cent interest per annum, health and disaster support, retirement packages and award schemes for members, spousal benefits, voice calls, and data bundles for Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN), Telecel, Airtel, among others.

He said the current loan scheme, which ranged from GH¢500.00 to GH¢10,000.00 with 10 per cent interest, would soon be scaled up to over GH¢50,000.00 with the same interest rate.

He hinted that some banks were negotiating with the leadership of the Association to offer the loans to members at the same rate and indicated that leadership would soon conclude the negotiations for members to access larger amounts.

Mohamadu Dokurugu, the Bolgatanga Municipal Chairman of the GRNMA, announced the commissioning of a newly refurbished Municipal office space for administrative work.

He said Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo, the President of the GRNMA, supported them with office equipment to aid their work in the office located on the premises of the Regional Hospital near the Hemodialysis Centre.

The Municipal Chairman said members in the Municipality could visit the office on weekdays during official hours to have their issues addressed.

International Nurses Day, which birthed the Nurses and Midwives Week celebration, was observed worldwide on May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the mother of nursing.

The annual event, initiated in 1965 through the efforts of the International Council of Nurses in 1974, was used to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of nurses and midwives to nation-building.

Since the GRNMA’s inception in 1960, it has, over the decades, launched the International Nurses Day, coupled with the Nurses and Midwives Week celebrations, across the ten administrative regions of the Association and replicated them across all municipalities and districts in the country.