Bright Simons’ claim that contact tracers quit work over unpaid allowances untrue – Unemployed group

The President of Coalition of Graduate Unemployed Allied Health Professionals, Ebenezer Kojo Nkrumah, has quashed claims made by Bright Simons that 600 out of 900 trained contact tracers for the fight against Coronavirus in the country have abandoned their work because their daily allowances were being paid irregularly.

Bright Simon said “Ghana budgeted $1.2m for 1000 contact tracers. It ended up training 900. 600 dropped out due to grievances. Their $25/day allowance is becoming erratic. $530k was budgeted for Ministers and parliamentarians for ‘oversight’. $0 was budgeted for the science folks doing the testing!”

Reacting to this, President of Coalition of Graduate Unemployed Allied Health Professionals, Ebenezer Kojo Nkrumah said the above statement was unfounded.

He indicated that all the unemployed workers who were contacted to help in the contact tracing were duly paid.

In an interview with GhanaWeb, he said “it’s never true. Those that did the contact tracing, everybody got paid. They were not permanent staff, they were unemployed workers who were contacted to come and help when the cases were rising.”

He continued that the people on the field now are permanent Allied Health Professional workers and the Ghana Health Service Staff because most of the tests have been conducted.

Mr Nkrumah said, “Ideally, I think majority of the tests have been done and the rest to be done is being left for the Ghana Health staff.”

Please listen to the interview below