President Mahama speaks on striking nurses issue

President John Dramani Mahama has hinted that government has set as one of its top most priorities, the need to revise human resource management information systems in the country.

According to the president, this would help eliminate delays in the payment of salaries of government workers.

Speaking on the issue of delays in the payment of salaries for psychiatric nurses, President Mahama said the strike by the nurses was a reflection of the failure of the Ministry of Health to process data of newly recruited nurses on time.

According to the president, it represents “a failure of our human resources system. The Ministry of Health is not able to process quickly enough, the data of new nurses so that the Accountant General’s department can capture it and begin to pay them.”

“So often, the postings are done, the nurses go to post, it takes the Ministry of Health too long to process their data and so they stay without salary for a protracted period and that is what is irking the nurses, and so we are going to have to revise our human resource management information system, and that is one of the priorities government has set itself.”

Nurses at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital last week embarked on a strike action to put pressure on government to pay their salary arrears. This has forced the hospital to turn away patients.

However the Controller and Accountant General Department on Wednesday announced it has released an amount of GHȻ756,000 for the payment of the outstanding salary arrears of about 133 nurses in the three psychiatric hospitals in Ghana.

The Ministry of Health has therefore advised the striking nurses to get back to work.