Midwifery Council condemns sacking of pregnant student

The Nursing and Midwifery Council has condemned the action of the principal of the Gushegu Midwifery Training School in the Northern Region who, on Wednesday, prevented a student from continuing with her examination because she was pregnant.

According to the Council, nothing in its statutes prevents a pregnant woman from sitting for a paper.

The Registrar of the Council, Felix Nyanteh, told Accra-based Joy FM Thursday, 11 May: “It is not the Nursing and Midwifery Council that asked the student to go home or barred the student from writing the licence exams…”

He explained that when the news got to his office, he called the principal Ms Rukaya Alhassan on phone and in the presence of Joy News’ Manasseh Awuni Azure, who was there to follow up on the story, to condemn her action.

“I told her what she did was not based on law and so far as the council is concerned, we do not have any statutes that bar students from writing exams when they are pregnant. This is something the council doesn’t take kindly to,” he stated.

He said if the board of the council were in place, he would have sent the issue to them for redress. He disclosed the council has met with principals of these schools across the country and told them there is no law even in the constitution that bars students from writing their licensing exams. “Pregnancy is not a criminal offence,” he added.

Mr Nyanteh said the affected student, Cecilia Awuni, would be made to write a supplementary paper. “That one we’ll instruct the principal to do that,” he assured.

Meanwhile, James Awuni, husband of Mrs Awuni, said the Principal refused to allow his wife to write the exams despite numerous pleas by him on the phone to that effect and irrespective of assurances by the student that she was fit for the exams.

He told Joy FM that his wife has been left traumatised after her sacking from school on the grounds of being pregnant.

Mr Awuni has, therefore, pleaded to the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Djaba, to intervene to stop the Principal from violating the rights of her wife as well as that of several other students who may have suffered similar fate at the hands of the principal.

According to the husband, his wife wrote three of six papers but was prevented from going ahead with the fourth by the Principal.