The General Secretary of the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has slammed the leaders of the trainee nurses and midwives who protested, for being insensitive to the bigger picture of health care in the country and only dragging along trainees at the expense of their academic work.
Speaking on a local radio station in the Upper West Region, Mr. Asiedu Nketia noted that, the leaders of the trainees were not students and would not suffer the academic effects of the protest.
“Those who are leading the trainee nurses association, none of them is a trainee nurse. They have finished school and when they do the demonstration to disrupt the classes, it doesn’t affect them. They have written their final exams already. They have the space to go round all the schools to cause agitation. When it leads to the closure of the schools, they are not affected,” the NDC General Secretary explained.
On Thursday, the trainee nurses and midwives marched from the Obra Spot at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, through some principal streets of Accra to express their anger with government for refusing to pay allowances they said were due them.
The demonstration was also to advocate for employment of all qualified nurses and midwives. The aggrieved nurses have complained that the government has failed to create job opportunities for them.
Mr. Asiedu Nketia further highlighted what he perceived to be some degree of insensitivity on the part of the leaders of the protest, stating that they wanted the allowances at the expense of better working conditions for all nurses.
“..You are insisting that the money that should be used to build more hospitals where you can get more spaces to work should be diverted to employ you, what you are saying is that, you want to be concentrated in the few major hospitals. If you are 10 nurses to one patient; you don’t care so long as you take you salary.”
Don’t politicize our plight
But the President of the Trainee Nurses and Midwives Association, Godwin Akazee, has warned against the warping of their demands with politics.
Speaking during the demonstration on Thursday, Mr. Akazee said, “all the issues that we have raised, they are all genuine issues. But politicians have their own way of doing things and they always have their own way doing things and they always put political notions into it.”
“Let me say categorically without reservations that whether NPP, NDC, CPP… or whatsoever government is in power, if there is the need for us to demand for a reduction on our school fees, we will do so. If there is the need for us to demand for our long overdue allowances to be paid, we will do so,” he stated defiantly.
–
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana