President of the Students Representative Council of the Bolgatanga Nursing Training College (BNTC), Mr. Benjamin Asaana Ndegumah, has expressed concern over unpaid allowance of students.

According to him, government hasn’t made any allowance payments to students for four months now.

“There are inconsistencies in the payment. Some get it, while others don’t. We have some students who still have not received any. We made follow-ups to the Ministry and what they tell us is that they are working on it”.
Benjamin Asaana Ndegumah

Following this, he recounted incidents last year where eight months’ allowances of student nurses were not paid.

“Even some of our colleagues completed school without their allowances.

“So, we plead with the Minister to intervene for us. The irregularities in the allowances are a major problem to us”.
Benjamin Asaana Ndegumah

Mr Ndegumah made this petition to the Upper East Regional Minister who visited the College to interact with staff and students as part of his scheduled visits to health training institutions in the region.

With this, a section of students also revealed that for the first three months of the year, government made payments to them. However, they haven’t yet received their May, June, and July allowance.

Infrastructure challenges at BNTC

Furthermore, the Bolga Nurses SRC President further elaborated on several concerns of students of the College. He maintained that the road leading to the College was in bad condition and without street lights, exposing students to robbery attacks.

With this, he equally appealed to the Minister for computers and books to stock their computer laboratory and library respectively. This, he indicated, will help in their academic activities, further calling for support to fix the infrastructural challenges of the College.

On his part, the Principal of the College Mr. Williams Sebil, revealed that despite the number of challenges suffered by the College, it had produced highly qualified nurses for the region and the entire country.

“If you check the records of the College, we have produced a lot [of nurses], some of them are Nurse Tutors, District Directors of Health Services in this region and beyond. The College has achieved a lot in terms of academics.”

He further indicated that the College had 89.4 percent pass in the 2020 Nursing and Midwifery Council’s licensing examination. Also, Mr Sebil noted that referred students from that examination who rewrote, got 100 percent pass.

Commenting on the issue of possible COVID-19 infection among students, Mr Sebil revealed that, “so far, we don’t have any problem, and I must thank the government. We had enough Personal Protective Equipment, and we are grateful to the government in this direction”.

Attitude of nurses towards patients

Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Stephen Yakubu, also advised the management and tutors of the College to focus on the attitude of the nurses they churn out.

According to him, Ghanaian trained nurses fitted well and worked professionally outside the country.

However, the situation is not the same in the country as some of them exhibit bad attitudes towards patients.

Mr Yakubu observed that most people were into the nursing profession as a means to easily gain employment after the training.