The Members of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) will from today (Monday, November 7) withdraw their services from the Out Patients Department (OPD) of every public health facility nationwide.

A circular sent to nurses and sighted by Pulse.com.gh mentioned their salary arrears as one of their reasons for embarking on the withdrawal of service.

Currently, over 2,000 nurses and midwives have not been paid their full salaries and other benefits in the last three years. The nurses and midwives say all efforts to get the government to pay them all their outstanding salaries and benefits have been fruitless.

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At a press conference on Thursday, October 27, 2016, the president of the GRNMA, Kwaku Asante-Krobea said “although our checks with the IPPD Unit of the Ministry of Health indicates that over eight thousand of the claim forms have been validated, our nurses and midwives are yet to be paid their salary arrears. There are hundreds of the nurses and midwives who have worked for various periods up to sixteen months who have not been paid a pesewa for the services they are rendering to mother Ghana.”

They also mention that this action is to get the government to post their counterparts who have graduated from the Nursing Training Colleges but are yet to be posted.

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Other reasons for this action include the charging of promotion interview fees and the second tier pension scheme.

The circular mentioned that only the emergency and maternity cases will be seen to.

The nurses and midwives will withdraw all their services from November 14 if the government does not do anything about their demands. During this time they will see to in-patients only.