National Chairman of the Nurses Educators Group Ghana, Matthew Adamu Bakinam, has revealed that members of the association have threatened to withdraw their services due to poor working conditions.

According to him, the group has a lot of challenges and has tried its best, along with its mother association, the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association to resolve the matter with government at the negotiating table. He indicated that members are not happy and are waiting to get a feedback from government.

“We will start withdrawal of our services; we will continue to teach but we will not mark the case study, we will not supervise students on clinicals until government comes to our aid. We want negotiation…”
Matthew Adamu Bakinam

Mr Bakinam noted that government’s representative and special advisor to the minister of health, Dr Baffuor Awuah, in a meeting with the group yesterday appealed to members and pledged to meet the ministry to address their concerns and give “feedback as soon as possible”.

Conditions of service for tutors

Mr Bakinam stated that members, since February this year, have anticipated receiving their research and book allowance, but that has not been given yet. To compound matters, he highlighted that they have “longstanding issues that we’ve been appealing to the ministry to come to our aid”.

“The major among them is our allowances or conditions of services. If you look at our marking allowance, it’s nothing to write home about and we have something called case study supervision [and] we have practical assessment supervision. Most of our members across the country, if I take case study for instance, follow patients to the hospital, sleep there, monitor them, and take them through the [process]. At the end of the day, what they are remunerated if I mention to you, you’ll be shocked.”
Matthew Adamu Bakinam

In addition to the challenges of members, Mr Bakinam expressed that tutors who supervise resident work for students, are given pittance at the end of the day. With this, he stated that inspite of the group being in consultation with the Ghana Registered Nurses Association, resolution of the matter is delaying.

The National Chairman of Nurses Educators Group Ghana opined that his members are keen on ensuring the “implementation of the research and book allowance component”, as they are part of the conditions of services members signed on to. He noted that the group, through GRNA has written to government, to among other things, review the marking allowances of tutors but to no avail.

“When you mark a script, there’s a fee that is attached to it that you have to enjoy or take home. We have something we call monitoring; if a tutor leaves a facility into the field… we want to have permanent allowances that should be attached that if a tutor leaves a place to another facility to monitor students on clinical, these thing are things the tutor is due. We have other members of our colleagues who are occupying serious positions in the school and they are contributing their best…”
Matthew Adamu Bakinam

Commenting on the state of promotions in the schools, Mr Bakinam revealed that despite the fact that there are hardworking staff who have worked for a number of years, they are yet to be promoted. He emphasized that the delay in promotions is causing members to agitate “as if the leaders and government are in bed”, which in reality, is not so.

“… So, what we are saying is that come August, school will be reopening [and] we are hoping to dialogue [and] we are ready to negotiate. We know government is a listening government, so they should come to our aid and let’s sit down. We know that strike is not the best for the nation… but we are working towards that deadline, hoping government will come to our aid to salvage the poor conditions of service.”
Matthew Adamu Bakinam