Government doesn't owe you employment – Agyeman-Manu to jobless Nurses

The Health Minister, Kweku Agyeman-Manu has described the series of picketing by unemployed nurses to demand for posting as befuddling.

The unemployed nurses across the country during one of their picketing exercises at the Health Ministry, where they were beaten by heavy downpour, told newsmen that they are gradually becoming a threat to the society due to their sordid conditions.

Also early this month, some young men who said they are unemployed nurses emerged with a protest banner at the Unity Walk of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), saying they had come to former President John Dramani Mahama to save their future from doom under the current government.

The banner boldly reads: “You employed bonded nurses but Nana wants to make us zoom nurses” and “You were honest to us but Nana deceived us and failed to pay us our allowance”.

Dressed in nursing uniforms and showing newsmen their nursing identity cards to prove they were not masqueraders, they held the banner as they walked alongside hundreds of NDC supporters through the streets and highways of the regional capital, Bolgatanga.

Speaking to Starr News’ Ibrahim Alhassan on the developments, Mr. Agyeman-Manu said the demands of the nurses for financial clearance and onward posting is improbable.

“I don’t understand what is happening. You sit home for how many years; some of them since 2012. There was a government that had put embargo on even recruiting you people. Last year we lifted it and recruited 17000 and you come picketing, forcing me to do what is not doable,” he complained.

He added: “The fact that you have finished school does not mean that compulsorily government should by all means put you there. Some finished during the NDC time, sat home for three to four years, we are looking at them first.

“Now 2016/2017, you finished school, finished National Service in two months your picketing for a job. Is that fair to me?”