No budget made for over 13,000 nurses recruited in 2024 – Akandoh

Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh has revealed that the Akufo-Addo administration failed to allocate funds for over 13,000 nurses and midwives it recruited in 2024.

He said this lapse has left the current government struggling to put the affected health workers on the payroll.

Speaking on The Point of View on Channel One TV on Wednesday, October 15 and monitored closely by today.com.gh, Mr. Akandoh said the clearance issued by the previous government for the recruitment of the nurses and midwives had no financial provision, which created significant challenges for his ministry.

“The reality is that in 2024, government started to recruit nurses and midwives. So the summary is that they recruited about 13,500 nurses and midwives and issued clearance,” he said.

“Once you issue clearance, you must make financial provision. Clearance is not just a paper… you issue clearance when indeed you can pay when you recruit the people,” he added.

The Minister explained that the clearance expired at the end of 2024 without any of the recruits being added to the payroll.

“The clearance expired on 31st December 2024. What it means is that before the expiration… you must necessarily have all these 13,500 people on the payroll. As at the end of 31st December 2024, not a single one of the 13,500 people were on the payroll,” he said.

According to him, the nurses began work around August 2024 but were not captured in the budget, forcing the current administration to explore ways to regularize their employment.

“When we came, there were two options available because there was no allocation for these nurses and midwives. One — let them go home and look for the funding and extend the clearance and then they come and work. Two — you can allow them to work while you look at how you will pay them, because that was not captured as part of our budget,” he explained.

He revealed that the Ministry of Health has since worked with the Ministry of Finance to place about 7,000 of the nurses on the government payroll.

“I have been collaborating with the Minister responsible for Finance, and out of the 13,500, we managed to put about 7,000 of them on the payroll. So half of them were being paid,” he said.

“The reality is that we captured about 10,000 of them on the payroll, but only 7,000 on the payroll were being paid. Some of them have received payments from March thereabout. We were onboarding them gradually,” he added.

Mr. Akandoh also disclosed that additional financial obligations such as arrears, unpaid allowances, and unimplemented service conditions further compounded the issue.

“It got to a time that we realised that there were a lot of things — more than even the 13,500 nurses they had recruited. There were arrears of allowances, there were conditions of services that had been signed and they were not implemented… So it was like the budget was becoming much bigger,” he said.

He stated that the ministry had to return to Cabinet to seek further financial approval to prevent budget overruns.

“So we realised that if we don’t go back to Cabinet, it will throw the budget off,” the Minister noted.