GRNMA Threatens Nationwide Strike In Response To Government’s Planned Layoffs Of Nurses and Midwives Recruited After December 7

The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has served notice of a nationwide strike if government carries out its decision to sack nurses and midwives recruited into the public service after the December 7 elections.

According to the leadership of the GRNMA, the directive will affect over 5,000 nurses and midwives in the public service and that will have a toll on healthcare delivery.

President of the Association, Perpetual Ofori Ampofo who spoke exclusively with 3news’ labour affairs correspondent, Daniel Opoku, in Accra on February 14, said the dismissal should be halted immediately.

Mrs Ampofo warned that, “any dismissal of those nurses and midwives will lead to a nationwide strike.”

“There is a lot of tension in our fraternity, and you should be on our platforms, and we are saying that if they go ahead and suspend we will have no choice than to stand in solidarity with our colleagues. And the solidarity means that if you are asking them to stay at home then we will all stay at home in solidarity with them,” she explained.

Few weeks ago, government through the Chief of Staff directed Heads of State Institutions to revoke the appoinments of persons recruited after the general elections in December, 2024 whose names as of January 2025, are not on the Controller and Accountant-General’s payroll.

The directive has since ignited agitations among those employees, some of whom are nurses and midwives. These affected nurses and midwives are the 2020 and 2021 batches who were recruited by the previous government.

Mrs Ofori Ampofo said the leadership of the GRNMA has engaged the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh on the matter.

Meanwhile, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service has issued a statement asking heads of institutions to begin sacking those newly recruited nurses and midwives before investigations are conducted.

Mrs Ampofo described this development as unfair.

“We already have our colleagues on the field experiencing burn out, units and departments that are not meeting the ideal nurse to patient ratios and also faced with emigration of our colleagues into high earning income countries and therefore there is a huge workload on those that are post and working,” she lamented.

According to her, “If you we have been able to recruit nurses and midwives to augment the care that is being given why would we want to now suspend them to go and sit at home for investigations to be conducted? In our view, they should be at post for investigations to be conducted and that will inform whatever actions we would want to take but not the reverse.”

She called on the Minister of Health to halt the dismissal process.

“We had a meeting with the Minister on the 13th of February and he explained to us, but he did not give us any indication that the nurses and midwives are going to be suspended,” she said.
 

 

 

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