The government has sent a directive to all public nursing and midwifery schools to reduce their intake to only 60 percent of the school’s capacity.

A statement by the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health stated that the directive should be followed strictly by all public nursing and midwifery schools as the academic year starts in September.

The spokesperson for the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Nana Boateng Agyeman said that the decision to reduce intake is to improve the quality of nurses.

“We want to produce [nurses] to meet demand…I won’t call it a cut-down…It's about quality, we want to train health professionals who will give quality healthcare,” Mr. Agyeman told Accra-based Starr FM.

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Several nursing and midwifery groups have for some days now been picketing the Health Ministry to demand immediate postings.

And many believe that the decision to reduce intake of nurses now is to enable the government to fulfil its promise of restoring the nurses’ trainee allowance withdrawn by the previous NDC administration.

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But Mr. Agyeman said that: “As far as the policy is concerned this is not connected to the restoring of the allowance…we are looking at quality.”