The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has urged government to prioritize the health of Ghanaians.

The call comes after the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) announced that some 5,000 senior high school graduates will be employed to assist with basic health care delivery, such as recording medical history of patients at CHPS compounds in rural areas.

GRNMA has opposed the idea, as it maintains that only skilled professionals should be engaged.

Speaking on the Point of View on Citi TV, the General Secretary of GRNMA, David Tenkorang-Twum, could not fathom the rationale behind recruiting high school graduates when there is a backlog of unemployed nurses.

He suspects the decision could be because government is “looking for cheap labour.”

“We need to prioritize the health sector and the lives of people. We can’t play with people’s lives. Everyone who works in the sector is regulated.”

“These SHS graduates, which body is going to regulate them? The Ghana Health Service? That is nothing but an extension of government.”

He maintained that the association will not back down until “the last graduate nurse is employed.”

Members of the 2019 batch of Nurse Assistant Preventive (NAP) and Nurse Assistant Clinical (NAC) recently threatened to demonstrate over government’s failure to post them.

According to them, although they have been registered on the Ministry of Health’s recruitment portal and made several follow-ups to draw the attention of the government to their plights, it has fallen on deaf ears, hence their intention.