Speed up student's loan procedure - Nursing trainees

Students of the Koforidua Nursing Training School, have made an appeal to government to speed up the processes with the Students Loan Trust to enable them access loans.

They said anytime they went to the Koforidua office of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), they were turned off with the explanation that government has not entered with any agreement with them for nursing trainees to be given the loan facility.

“We are not happy that the allowances have been scrapped, but the loans which is an alternative too, we have not received anything for the past two years,” they said.

The students made the appeal at a dialogue session with the Eastern Regional Minister, Ms Mavis Ama Frimpong, who paid a working visit to the school as part of her tour of public institutions.

They said the inability to access loans was hampering their effective learning since they had to pay for utility bills, feeding and make provision for some needs required at the hospitals for their clinicals and called on government to come to their aid.

Currently it’s only the final year nursing training students who are receiving the student allowances as the last batch whiles the second and first year students are expected to be enrolled on the student loan trust facility according to the new policy.

Ms Frimpong promised take the issue up to the appropriate authority to ensure that the process of the loan acquisition was quickened to to facilitate their studies.

Mrs Matilda Bansah, the principal of the school, thanked the Minister for the visit and disclosed that the school obtained 100 per cent and 98 per cent respectively in General Nursing and Midwifery licensure examination last year.

She also noted that the school had satisfied all the conditions including the automation of the library and some infrastructure required for accreditation from the National Accreditation Board as a diploma awarding institution.