Government through the Ministry of Health (MoH) has released a total amount of GH¢198,200,000.00 for the payment allowances for trainee nurses.
The amount is the final part of the payment of the nurses’ allowance from September 2018 to June 2019, for all trainees in public health training institutions.
The amount which was released on Thursday, August 8, 2019 is in fulfillment of the government’s commitment to the restoration of the Nursing Trainee allowance in 2017.
Each trainee nurse received an amount of GH¢ 400.00 for 10 months in each academic year to support their academic and clinical work.
The Ministry of health in a statement to announce the release of the funds, said it was working assiduously to ensure that trainees who could not receive their allowances owing to challenges with their Ezwich cards are paid immediately.
“Trainees who may have other challenges with the payment of the allowance are kindly advised to contact the Heads their schools for redress,” the statement signed by its Chief Director, Nana Kwabena Adjei-Mensah said.
Deploying the cancellation of the allowances, in 2014, President Akufo-Addo asserted that the action brought untold hardships to the thousands of nurses and midwives in the country, who depended on it for their studies and for their welfare.
Background
The introduction of trainee allowances originally started in the country with training colleges that were attached to some secondary schools with the intention of motivating more students to pursue teacher training education.
Later, nurse/midwife trainees allowance was also introduced to encourage more people to study nursing and midwifery courses, and this continued until the 2013/14 academic year when the policy was abolished by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
In the run-up to the 2016 general election, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) promised to restore the allowance, if voted into power, to serve as a motivation to attract more people to attend nursing colleges and colleges of education.
The restoration of the allowance is, therefore, in fulfilment of the NPP government’s 2016 campaign promise.
Source: Daily Guide
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Frank or whatever you call yourslf. When the allowace was inplemented in 80's where were you. Why did you tell Rawlence to cancel it but now Nana is implementing you are complaining .This allowa help my child to complete her nursing training when I lost my job. Stop complaining and think the way the country gets plenty nurses. Enemies in progress
Your advise is irrelevant ndc is not the same as npp so each do different things l. Keep it to yourself till probably 2060 when ndc could get a chance and then you implement your so called loans!ndc is not good for Ghana they never think any good about the country and even feel bitter about free shs and teacher and nurses trainee allowances. You can advise ndc members who are enjoying to opt out and ask for loans nobody is preventing you from that,but it's ridiculous ndc members who are receiving it are quiet and trying to sabotage Ghana. You people have a big problem !
The payment of this allowance in my opinion in our current state of affairs as a nation is not the best. The question I kept asking is what effect will it have on teacher and nursing trainees if this allowance is converted into student loan? Every 10 months we spend GHC198million on nurses allowance which can build a decent modern hospital that will provide immediate employment for these nurses. I believe strongly that the leadership of NPP is aware that payment of this allowance currently is an exercise that they should not engage in but rather be bold and convert it into student loan so that if any student need financial assistant in the course of their study can access. I am tempted to believe that it's due to political expediency that NPP is struggling to pay this allowance. We have to take a second look at payment of this allowance as a nation.