Restoring fully, the allowances of nursing trainees will threaten the future of Ghana’s economy, Vice President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur has said.
Speaking at the Nalerigu Nursing and Midwifery College in the Northern region, the Vice President asked the students to disregard promises by the opposition to restore the allowances, since it is not in the interest of the state.
The government withdrew the allowances of student nurses in order to remove limited intake by nursing training institutions due to the huge amount it had to pay in the form of allowances.
Nursing students who relied on the allowances resisted the decision which led to the setting up of a committee by government to find an alternative to the allowances.
About two months ago, the government announced that per the commendations of the committee, some 34,500 students who are currently pursuing various levels of health professional training would receive a payment of GHc 150 a month instead of the initial GHc400 a month.
Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur’s comments come as the New Patriotic Party keeps reiterating its promise to restore fully the allowances of the nursing trainees if given the mandate on December 7.
He assured the students that part of the scrapped allowances is being used to build infrastructure for the growing population.
“We want to invest some of the resources of this country for the future. If I stand here and just say that the ‘alawa’ has been reintroduced, you will be happy and then we will go home but then it will have an implication for the future…because it means that the school blocks that we want to build for the growing population, we may not be able to do it,” the former governor of Bank of Ghana indicated.
He assured them that government is pulling its weight to improve the lives of the people, hence the investment in infrastructure and facilities.
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