Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the minister of health, has explained the difficulties his ministry encountered in placing more than 13,000 recently hired nurses and midwives on government payroll and has blamed the previous administration for granting approval without providing funding.
His remarks come after the Minority in Parliament accused the Minister of deceiving medical experts over the payments and financial clearances status.
The minority blames the current administration for not extending the clearance in a timely manner, claiming the previous government had already allotted cash.
They contend that the Minister’s attempt to obtain Cabinet clearance is pointless and an attempt to hide the fact that the problem has been neglected.
The Minister clarified that despite approval in 2024 for the hiring of over 13,500 nurses and midwives, no money was set aside to compensate them in an interview on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Wednesday, October 15.
“The reality is that in 2024, government started to recruit nurses and midwives. So the summary is that they recruited about 13,500 nurses and midwives and issued clearance,” he said.
“Once you issue clearance, you must make financial provision. Clearance is not just a paper, you issue clearance when indeed you can pay when you recruit the people.”
Mr. Akandoh claims that although the clearance was set to expire at the end of 2024, none of the hired staff had been placed on the payroll by then.
He stated that “The clearance expired on 31st December 2024. What it means is that before the expiration… you must necessarily have all these 13,500 people on the payroll. As at the end of 31st December 2024, not a single one of the 13,500 people were on the payroll.”
He pointed out that the current administration has little options because the recently hired nurses began working around August 2024 but were not budgeted for.
“When we came, there were two options available because there was no allocation for these nurses and midwives. One, let them go home and look for the funding and extend the clearance and then they come and work. Two, you can allow them to work while you look at how you will pay them, because that was not captured as part of our budget,” he said.
Since then, the Health Minister added, efforts have been made in coordination with the Finance Ministry to gradually integrate the staff onto the payroll.
“I have been collaborating with the Minister responsible for Finance, and out of the 13,500, we managed to put about 7,000 of them on the payroll. So half of them were being paid,” he reiterated.
“The reality is that we captured about 10,000 of them on the payroll, but only 7,000 on the payroll were being paid. Some of them have received payments from March thereabout. We were onboarding them gradually.”
Mr. Akandoh went on to say that as more financial commitments were discovered, the issue grew increasingly complex.
“It got to a time that we realised that there were a lot of things, more than even the 13,500 nurses they had recruited. There were arrears of allowances, there were conditions of services that had been signed and they were not implemented. So it was like the budget was becoming much bigger,” he remarked.
He clarified that in order to prevent budget overruns, the decision was made to go back to Cabinet for additional budgetary permission.
“So we realised that if we don’t go back to Cabinet, it will throw the budget off,” the minister said.
Source: newsthemegh.com