Bonding of nurses irrelevant – Health Minister

The Minister of Health Kwaku Agyemang Manu has described as irrelevant the government bonding of nurses.

“We have several nursing training schools – some private ones have been training nurses for us…they pay their own school fees. So the value of bonding doesn’t seem to be real now,” he told Accra-based Citi FM Thursday.

The Minister’s comments come at the back of a statement by the Ministry saying that starting from the 2017/2018 academic year, new entrant trainee nurses will not be mandated to serve a bond after completion of their training in government funded health institutions.

Also the Deputy Health Minister Tina Mensah on the back of protest staged at the premises of the Ministry by some of the unposted bonded midwives and psychiatric said moves are underway to revoke the bonding arrangement.

“The ministry is looking to review this bonding, we are considering that because coming to do all these things here… a lot of private schools are also into the training of nurses and everybody is training because they know that when you finish you are bonded for someone to get you a job.

“So the enrollment and the numbers are just increasing everywhere; after all you may not need the numbers at the same time so you must know the limit and how many you need at a particular time,” she told Starr News’ Daniel Nii Lartey.

Former Health minister under the erstwhile NDC administration Alex Segbefia last year gave hint

The government of Ghana introduced the bonding arrangement in 2005 to curb the brain drain in the health sector which was affecting health delivery in the country.