The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) revealed that there is a backlog of over 20,000 nurses and midwives in the country awaiting employment.

According to the association, a decision by the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) to enrol Senior High School (SHS) graduates to assist nurses at Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds, will not bode well for the nurses under the circumstances.

GRNMA indicated that despite the demanding work schedule of Nurses at CHPS compounds, the YEA has no reason to enrol SHS graduates when there is already a backlog of unemployed nurses waiting to be employed. It emphasized that more than half of the number are “Nurse Assistant (Preventive) who are also appointed as CHNs”.

“In total there is a backlog of over 20,000 nurses and midwives of all cadres belonging to 2019, 2020, 2021 batches also awaiting employment.”
GRNMA

The association concerted to the fact that the work in rural communities can be quite “daunting for CHNs to the extent that they can hardly have time to attend to their personal and career development” issues. However, it noted that assistance will be required but not from Senior High School (SHS) graduates.

Training SHS students to help nurses is disturbing

It indicated that there are 10, 727 Nurse Assistants (Clinical and Preventive) who already “had accessed the MOH’s recruitment portal” and were waiting to be posted to various parts of Ghana.

GRNMA expressed that it finds the YEA’s decision to train SHS graduates to help nurses with services, including recording medical history and symptoms, conducting physical examinations, providing simple bedside care to patients, mostly in rural communities “very disturbing and a clear displacement” of Ghana’s priority to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 3(SDG 3) and Universal Health Coverage by 2030.

Government, on August 19, 2022, expressed its intention to employ about 5,000 Senior High School (SHS) graduates by the end of August 2022 to help with basic health care delivery on Community Health-Based Planning Services (CHPS) compounds across the country. 

Alhaji Ibrahim Bashiru, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Operations, Youth Employment Agency (YEA) indicated that the Agency was collaborating with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) with the “Community Health Worker” programme to train the selected graduates and “deploy them to our CHPS” compounds.

He noted that the CHPS compounds are usually located in rural communities, so, they’ll be there to help the regular nurses with record keeping and basic things that would help the nurses to be able to do their work.

Every year, Mr Bashiru explained that the Agency intends to roll out not less than 2,000 artisans including tillers, tailors, carpenters, and masons. He stated that the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Service will get the experts to train them and after that we will deploy them.

Alhaji Bashiru indicated that the Artisanal Directorate of the Agency would work closely with the Ghana Police Service to ensure that beneficiaries had no criminal record, as their services would be accessed through a mobile phone application. 