About 200 nurses and midwives may leave Ghana for Barbados – GRNMA President
The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRMA) has projected that about two hundred nurses may leave to Barbados soon.
The Association has implored the cohort of nurses in Barbados now not to emigrate from that country without serving for two years.
President of the Association, Perpetual Ofori Ampofo made the call in an exclusive interview with our labour correspondent, Daniel Opoku, in Accra on August 16.
Government through the Ministry of Health signed an agreement with Barbados three years ago. The agreement is to allow nurses to work in that country.
Since 2022 to 2024, about four hundred nurses have been sent to Barbados. Currently, the Ministry of Health has announced enrollment for the programme, urging interested nurses to apply.
Mrs Ofori Ampofo has projected that about 200 nurses could apply to work in Barbados.
“If you take Barbados for example you need to hold, like the regulatory body expects, certain requirements that you can practice in Barbados. That is the crucial angel they look out for, your expertise, experience when you have that it is easier for you to practice there”.
“The first and second cohort for example, our midwives could not take advantage of it because in their country you need to be a nurse and build on with the midwifery as a specialty unlike in Ghana when you are doing midwifery as a direct programme”.
“What we have realized is that they are expected to serve for two years which is renewable and I just want to encourage those who are putting in their application to take note of that, such that when you go you are supposed to serve initially for two years and if you want to renew it for another two years that avenue is there”.
“There shouldn’t be a case where you go and then before the two years, you want to move to another country. If you know you have that intention, then don’t apply at all. You must represent Ghana and represent Ghana well,” she advised.
Mrs Ampofo expressed worry that Ghana has not been able to sign agreement with other European countries to send nurses and midwives to those countries.
She cited countries like the United States and United Kingdom which she says, government must ensure to have bilateral agreements with.
“As a country, we need to put up systems that will allow us to benefit from the emigration of our nurses and midwives where are they going to high income earning countries. They are benefitting on the side lines without any proper agreements with their countries for their movement and at the end of the day we lose out without getting anything back”.
“It’s important that we identify these countries, the major receiving countries of our nurses and begin to engage them so that we will know what we can do so that it can benefit us as a country. They can support the training of our nurses and also support the faculty and also support infrastructure and all of that and all of those things,” she said.
In another development, Mrs Ofori-Ampofo has appealed to the Ministry of Health to correct the anomaly in the payment of allowances of rotation nurses and midwives.
“The 2024 Single Spine Salary Structure stipulates clearly an amount that will be given to these interns. However, the financial clearance that came quoted a different figure and it has been a source of concern for us, and we are following up to get it corrected,” she assured.
