The Ministry of Health is entitled to 30% of admissions to nursing training colleges (NTC), but the Minority in Parliament has urged the administration to urgently change this policy (MoH).
It stated that in order for universities to operate at full capacity, the government must remove the self-imposed admissions bottlenecks.
Additionally, it forbade the MoH from interfering with the internally generated funds of schools of health and urged it to permit them to use their funds in accordance with the 2022 Budget Appropriations Act.
According to official notifications from the MoH to nursing training institutes, colleges are now only allowed to admit up to 50% of their total capacity.
Speaking to the media in Parliament yesterday, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the ranking member of the health committee, questioned how the government could claim to be increasing access to nursing training by providing trainee allowances while enforcing restrictive admissions quotas that would cut the same admissions by more than 50%.
“This, in our opinion, is a prescription for the rabid corruption that has recently characterized all admissions to government institutions, including the police force, the military, teacher training programs, and now nursing colleges.
In a letter dated August 2, 2022 and signed by Kwabena Boadu Oku-Afari, the Chief Director of the MoH, NTCs around the nation were instructed to set aside 30% of the approved admission quota for the 2022–2023 academic year for the MoH.
Dishonesty
The government’s quotas for nursing trainee admittance at the various NTCs are not new, according to Mr. Akandoh, but the new set of administrative guidelines coming from the MoH, if left unchecked, would be devastating and lead to significant attrition among health professionals.
