Government’s Decision To Scrap Bonding Of Nurses: A Welcoming News

I am sure many of us are aware of the phenomenon where many trained nurses left the shores of the country in search of greener pastures. This caused a lot of brain drain in the health sector especially. Many of these nurses travelled to the UK where they received about four times their salaries in Ghana. As the old axiom goes; necessity is the mother of invention. Therefore, about 12 years ago, the NPP government under JAK introduced the bond scheme to fund the education of nurses who then had to agree to work for the next five years in Ghana before they can travel outside the country.

This decision was taken at a time when there were few if any privately owned nursing training colleges in Ghana. Today, there are more nurses than the government and private health facilities can absorb. Sometimes, it is difficult even for the government to employ all the bonded nurses yet the embargo placed on them as result of the bond makes it impossible for these unemployed bonded nurses to seek employment elsewhere to better their lots. Remember, it is government’s responsibility to provide jobs for all manner of persons who have the requisite training to work in our health facilities scattered across the country irrespective of the school you attended. Yet, privately trained nurses were always discriminated against. They are always treated as second class citizens when it comes to employment opportunities because they are not ‘’bonded’’ graduates. Completely unacceptable, and an affront to rule of law, fairness and natural justice.

Let me quickly add that the bonding scheme has not stopped nurses from travelling abroad in search of greener pastures. In 2004, about 700 nurses who have served their bonds travelled out of the country. In 2013 and 2014, 107 and 192 nurses left the country respectively.

There are now more private schools churning out nurses and some of them can't even find jobs so why should government continue to bond the student nurses in public schools and continue to pay allowance. It is important to make the trained nurses who are unemployed geographically mobile to make them useful to society and themselves and the only way to achieve that is to scrap the bonding scheme.

It is important to note that, the plan to scrap this bonding scheme started as far back as 2015 under the NDC administration. In fact this plan was revealed by the Deputy Director of Human Resources at the Ministry of Health in an interview with the BBC in February, 2015. I support the decision of the Akufo Addo government to implement the plan of the previous administration. Surprisingly, the NDC have been attacking the Nana Addo government without a modicum of shame. Clueless opposition!!

One may ask, what about the campaign promises of the NPP to the nurse trainees? The position of the NPP was that, it was unacceptable not to pay the allowances of nurses so long as we continue to bond them. The NPP was of the view that all the nurse trainees who were in school were under the bond to serve the state for a period of five years before they can work else. Therefore, it was a kind of double jeopardy for the nursing students to be bonded and yet refused the allowance for which reason they were bonded. It is important to reemphasis the Nana Addo’s government will continue to deliver the promise to the nursing student who are currently under the bond until we gradually phase out the bonding scheme. Nana is a promise keeper.

Let’s create equal employment opportunities for all Ghanaians with equal qualifications. Let’s say no to employment on the basis of school attended. If it becomes necessary to retain more nurses again in the future, we will devise the appropriate strategies to solve the problem.

I am a Ghanaian. I am a citizen, not a spectator.
James McKeown, Helsinki.
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