Deputy Minister of Health, Rojo Mettle Nunoo has said that nurses who have not been paid are not qualified to work professionally. He was reacting to a story carried in a Ghanaian newspaper, The Heritage, on the Friday 24 February 2011 edition with the headline “Delays in nurses’ salaries” which stated that hundreds of community health assistants who completed school last year had not been paid any salary since April 2010. Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, the Deputy Minister of Health explained that the aggrieved nurses were those who did not have employment letters, hinting that they had not passed their professional exams and therefore did not qualify for employment. According to him, the profession is such that a nurse is expected to fulfill three requirements before being employed. The requirements, he said, are understanding the theory, doing practical attachment and writing and passing the professional examination. “When you finish your training attachment, you must pass an exam and it is only when your exam results have said that you have passed that you get recognized as a qualified medical person,” he stressed. The minister also said the duration for the practical attachment was six months and that the fact that anyone is still at post after that period did not mean the person was officially employment. “During that period [after attachment], they are not engaged…when you have somebody who is not a qualified person, that person cannot be engaged in your facility as a qualified person,” he emphasised. Mr Mettle-Nunoo added that nurses who did not report to their assigned posts or deserted their posts after reporting were also disqualified from receiving salaries. He however implored any qualified nurse who had not received any salary to contact the Ministry of Health for redress. Story by Fidel Amoah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana