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The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) decided to hire Senior High School (SHS) graduates to help nurses in Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds. The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) objected.
The association claims that YEA has no motive to enroll SHS graduates while there is already a backlog of unemployed nurses waiting to be hired, despite the tough work schedule of Nurses at CHPS compounds.
A statement issued by the association on Monday, 22 August 2022, noted: “Indeed the work in these 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. They, therefore, require assistance but not from Senior High School (SHS) graduates.”
10,727 Nurse Assistants (Clinical and Preventive) have reportedly already “entered the MOH’s recruiting portal and were waiting to be deployed to various parts of Ghana,” according to the report.
The association stressed that “Nurse Assistants (Preventive) who are also appointed as CHNs” make up more than half of the figures.
Over 20,000 nurses and midwives from all cadres and batches of 2019, 2020, and 2021 are currently unemployed and waiting for work.
It further noted that it, therefore, 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 as 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.”
According to the YEA, the government would hire roughly 5000 SHS graduates for CHPS facilities across the nation by the end of August 2022.
At the Ghana Job Fair, Alhaji Ibrahim Bashiru, the Deputy Chief Executive (CEO) of the YEA, announced this.
The SHS grads will work as nurses’ assistants, helping with tasks including taking down medical histories and symptoms, performing physical exams, and giving patients basic bedside care, among others.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
