Coalition of unemployed private nurses to picket at Flagstaff House on July 17

The Coalition of Unemployed Private Nurses (COUPN) has served notice of a nationwide demonstration involving over 3,000 of members should government fail to post them to various health facilities across the country, in five working days.

The group gave the ultimatum at a press conference held in Accra today [Monday] to express their displeasure at government in failing to post their members after successfully completing nursing school over the past 3-7 years.

Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the Coalition, Doreen Boateng said, they will have no other choice than to picket at the Flagstaff House on July 17, 2017. According to her, they will defy all threats and arrest by the security agencies to press home their demand.

She described as discriminatory the decision by government to post only public trained nurses to health facilities.

Using some articles in the constitution to buttress her point, she said, a person shall not be discriminated against on grounds of gender, religion, race, origin, colour, creed or social or economic status-Article 17 (2), when seeking employment and also, administrative bodies and administrative officials shall act fairly and responsibly and comply with requirements imposed on them by law (Article 23), when seeking for employment and in their view, ‘’government’s consistent failure to give equal opportunity in employment to nurses from both public and private schools…are clear signs of discrimination, unreasonable and unfair exercise of discretion by administrative bodies and neglect of others.’’

The Coalition also described the bonding of public trained nurses as much I do about nothing since further discriminates against those from the private schools with accreditation from government.

The constitution confers the rights to individuals to establish private schools to argument the efforts of government in training accredited persons hence it will improper to post only those from the public schools.

The made reference to a letter addressed to the presidency and the assurance that followed but all to no avail.

‘’It is increasingly becoming clearer to us, the government would like to see demonstrations and picketing in the coming days to be reminded of its duty to all duty sections of its citizens, including its constitutional duty to provide equal opportunities to all.’’

We are using this medium to once again appeal to President Akufo-Addo to intervene and get us posted.

We wish to reiterate that we would take all legitimate measures to uphold our rights and resist unfair, inhumane, unethical, injustice and despicable treatments meted out to our members, including sleeping over the Ministry of Health if nothing is heard from the government through the Ministry of Health within 5 working days,’’ the statement concluded.