The Ministry of Health says a comprehensive but multi-sectoral strategy has been designed to clear a backlog of unemployed nurses currently waiting for posting across Ghana.

The ministry recently launched a recruitment drive to employ the 2021 batch, but over 100 thousand trained nurses from 94 health training institutions, spanning four batches, have been home without employment.

In an exclusive interview with JoyNews, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Tony Goodman, revealed the long waiting periods could soon be over for unemployed nurses as the ministry introduces a strategic approach to deal with the challenge.

Trained nurses and allied health professionals idling at home several years after training without employment has become a routine in Ghana. Health authorities fear a tendency for professionals who stay home for a long period to forget what they learned. Here is a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, Tony Goodman.

“If I go to school and I come and in my six years or five years, I'm still home, my trade, whatever I went to learn, would also leave me. And that is why we are doing all of these things. So, we'll make sure, it's a challenge we have come to meet; we'll make sure that we deal with it and bring it to the barest minimum so that we can have a safe environment,” Mr Goodman observed.

To systematically eliminate the employment bottleneck, the Ministry has outlined a multi-tiered approach, which includes the employment of the 2021 batch as it begins clearing the existing backlog. The move, according to Mr. Goodman, forms part of the rollout of two recruitment batches every year to accelerate the employment of idle graduates.

“The number of cohorts that were trained in the past and have not been given jobs that has created that backlog that we have. If you look at the projection I made, all of these numbers, over 107,000 are currently home. This number, if you don't do anything about it, there will be a challenge. That is why the Ministry has begun the admission—the recruitment of the 2021. So, we'll gradually do it. Every year, we'll do two batches so that we can clear them.”

Mr. Tony Goodman speaks for the Ministry of Health

The Health Ministry is also implementing admission quota systems in nursing training institutions to align graduate numbers with sustainable employment capacity. Tony Goodman emphasized that reducing training quotas is vital to prevent future surges of unabsorbed graduates entering the system.

“Then we continue to train. We will stagger the number of people who also go to training. So, the quota will be reduced to make sure that we don't have a lot of people coming out again. So, it is a multi-sectoral approach we are going to use—multifaceted—to make sure that we have a proper approach to deal with this problem.”

Meanwhile, nurses under the 2021 batch who successfully applied during the recent recruitment exercise have received appointment letters to begin new work life. A total of 107,141 trained nurses are yet to be employed.