Two months of the nursing-trainees allowance will be cleared by March 2019, the Minister of Health Mr Kwaku Agyemang Manu has said.
He explained that government was confronted with some administrative challenges that did not allow them to pay the allowances on time, adding that government was putting measures in place to pay the trainees.
Mr Agyemang Manu made this known when he was responding to questions from nursing trainees of the Bawku Presbyterian nursing and Midwifery training college in Bawku during a two-day working visit to the Upper East Region.
The trainees who expressed worry over government’s inability to honour its promise of paying the trainee allowances on time, said that the situation had compounded their financial burden on campus.
Meanwhile, Mr Agyeman Manu assured them of receiving their allowance in due course.
“We had problems towards the end of last year. Our releases were not coming from the Ministry of Finance and some allocations had gone off from their systems and that is why we are delaying and have accumulated some bit.” he said.
“But we have resolved with the Ministry of Finance that by the end of this week, the Controller and Accountant General Department will start releasing some monies to us and hopefully, within March we would have started payment for two months of the arrears owe trainees,” Mr Agyeman Manu added.
The Minister, however, admonished all principals of nursing training colleges to submit the list of registered first-year trainees to the ministry to facilitate payment of their allowances.
He hinted that the country’s health centre facilities will soon operate cashless and paperless hospitals to enhance quality and responsive health care delivery across the country.
He also
said the Ministry has linked twenty-nine hospitals in the central region already in the pilot phase where patients accessing health care at all level no longer require hardcopy documents.
“The accountants will not hold cash in the hospitals, we will link the hospitals to the nearest banks around them for all patients who visit their facilities for all cash payments,” he added.
Citinewsroom
