The Employment and Labour Relations Minister has accused the previous NPP administration of deliberately creating the current salary crisis facing thousands of newly recruited nurses and midwives.

Dr Rashid Pelpuo, speaking on JoyNews PM Express on October 7, said the issue was politically motivated and not the result of administrative failure.

The Wa Central MP said the decision by the former government to employ thousands of health workers without adequate budgetary provision was aimed at winning votes and not solving unemployment.

“This tells the story of what complaints we had when we assumed office,” he said.

“At the point of exit of the NPP government, they imposed on us 12,000 new workforce that they did not prepare to pay, didn’t have the money to pay, but employed them. And then they exited.

"The three-month budgets which they had to prepare as we took over didn’t take into consideration any of these.”

According to Dr Pelpuo, this is not the first time the NPP has handed over fiscal burdens to a succeeding government.

“Remember when President J.A. Kufuor was leaving, what was imposed on us was the Single Spine Salary Structure, which Atta Mills had to struggle with. So it’s like their DNA to give the incoming government a problem, let them fail, and let the people say that they have failed.”

He described the act as irresponsible, saying outgoing administrations should not create new problems for their successors.

“It’s not a good thing for us to be doing. Once your point of existence as a government comes to an end, go. The people had already rejected you. There’s nothing you can do to bring yourself back to power. You can’t recreate a future which had been lost.”

When asked by host Evans Mensah about reports that some of the nurses were recruited as early as July 2024, months before the elections, Dr Pelpuo maintained that the move was politically calculated.

“It shows that there had not been preparation. They had been preparing to contest elections. Everything that will give them a good image from the side of the young person who is unemployed and looking for a job is what they will do.

"So they had done this over a period of time, hoping that in the culminating imposition of another 12,000 they would have then won the hearts of the young people and given them another mandate.”

Pressed further if this meant the recruitment was done purely for electoral gain, Dr Pelpuo said, “That’s the assumption. What they are doing has some level of political decision tied to it, not necessarily because they wanted to pay them, but just to give them the impression that they, too, are employed.”

He assured that the government is working to resolve the crisis soon.

“We are not complaining. We are looking at the situation where we can satisfy the will of the people who have given us the mandate.

"We acknowledge the fact that young people, as they are, need to start life and need to be comfortable working for what they have been employed to do.

"And so we are doing everything to make it possible that we solve this problem before, maybe before the end of the year.”

The comments follow a protest by the Coalition of Unpaid Nurses and Midwives on October 2, where the group demanded payment of salaries for nearly 7,000 members who have been working without pay for close to ten months.

Dr Pelpuo’s remarks add a new layer to the controversy, suggesting that the roots of the crisis lie not in the current administration’s inaction, but in what he calls a politically driven recruitment scheme by the previous government.