Health Minister, Hon. Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has directed all health-sector agencies that have received newly recruited workers to fast-track the issuance of appointment letters and mechanisation, warning that delays in this process are what typically lead to salary arrears piling up for affected staff.
The directive comes as government moves to resolve outstanding financial clearance issues affecting thousands of health professionals recruited over the past year, with the Minister disclosing that funding for the majority of these workers has now been secured.
Hon. Akandoh explained that the affected health professionals had commenced work without financial clearance, creating a difficult situation for government. He said the Ministry opted to keep them at post while working closely with the Ministry of Finance to secure the necessary funding, rather than withdraw their appointments altogether.
According to the Minister, financial clearance had now been secured for all 13,500 workers affected, with only a few isolated cases still outstanding. He directed the Human Resource Directorate to expedite action to resolve these remaining cases without further delay.
Agencies Urged to Avoid Repeating Past Delays
The Minister was direct in his instruction to health-sector agencies regarding the processing of appointment letters and mechanisation for newly recruited staff, stressing that the funds needed to prevent salary backlogs are already available.
“If you don’t issue the appointment letters and you don’t start mechanising them, that is where and when we’ll be piling up the arrears, and this time round the money is available, so we don’t want to pile up any.”
Hon. Akandoh
He noted that some workers who reported early to their assigned facilities had already begun receiving their salaries, suggesting that where agencies act promptly, the system is capable of processing payments without the delays that previously affected the Coalition of Unpaid Nurses and Midwives.
Hon. Akandoh disclosed that government is targeting the recruitment of 16,000 health professionals in 2026, with financial clearance already secured for the first batch of 8,000. He assured that the Ministry would secure the necessary financial clearance for the remaining 8,000 before their recruitment proceeds, in order to prevent a recurrence of the salary arrears situation experienced with earlier recruitment batches.
He explained that after concluding processes for the initial 8,000, attention would shift to recruiting an additional batch to bring the total closer to the year’s target, with quotas continuing to be allocated across various health training institutions to ensure fair representation among beneficiaries.
Targeting Backlogged Batches by Profession
Providing further detail on how the recruitment process would be structured, the Minister explained that different categories of health professionals would be prioritised based on how long they had waited for recruitment.
He noted that for midwives, the Ministry would look at the 2021 batch, while for pharmacists, attention would go as far back as 2019, since professionals trained in that year had still not been recruited.
“I agree and admit that there is a large number of health professionals who have been trained but they are at home, and we all know that we can only recruit what the budget can pay.”
Hon. Akandoh
He explained that once the 2021 batch is cleared, the Ministry would move on to address the 2022 batch, describing this as a deliberate strategy to systematically work through the backlog of trained but unemployed health professionals over time, within the limits of available budgetary resources.
The Minister urged newly recruited health professionals to report to their assigned facilities before August 20, 2026, cautioning those who fail to meet the deadline risk losing their appointments entirely.
The directive appears aimed at ensuring prompt integration of new staff into the health system while allowing agencies sufficient time to process their documentation without further hold-ups.
Call for Dedication and Patient-Centred Care
Beyond addressing administrative and financial matters, Hon. Akandoh used the opportunity to encourage health workers to serve with dedication, urging them to treat patients with respect and dignity.
He stressed the importance of placing patients at the centre of healthcare delivery, framing this as a core expectation for all health professionals joining the workforce under the current recruitment drive.
Taken together, the Minister’s directives reflect a broader government strategy to expand Ghana’s health workforce while addressing longstanding administrative bottlenecks that have historically delayed salary payments for newly recruited staff.
With financial clearance now in place for thousands of workers and a clear roadmap for tackling recruitment backlogs by profession, the coming months are expected to test how effectively health-sector agencies respond to the Minister’s call for swifter processing, as government works toward its ambitious target of recruiting 16,000 health professionals within the year.
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