The decision to reinstate the allowances of students of nurse training institutions across the country is not a retreat by government to win votes, but an “interim” measure to support students who are not qualified to access student loans by virtue of the academic stratum of their courses, deputy minister of education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has said.

His explanation comes after a Ministry of Health statement announced on Thursday July 21 that it had acceded to the recommendations of a technical committee, set up by the president to look into the issue of student nurses’ allowances, that some categories of students be paid an abated allowance, in the interim, “with a possibility to migrate them onto the students’ loan scheme”.

But the government has been accused of taking the decision to win back votes from trainee teachers and nurses, three years after its decision to scrap allowances they previously enjoyed.

But clarifying the rationale behind the decision on Accra100.5FM’s breakfast show, Ghana Yensom, on Monday July 25, Mr Ablakwa said with close to 35,000 students in institutions across Ghana training to be nurses, as many as 20,000 were enrolled in certificate courses, which made them ineligible to access student loans, as the Student Loan Trust Act, which set up the Student Loan Trust Fund, only caters to students studying for accredited tertiary level qualifications.

But rather than do nothing for the majority of nursing students who do not qualify for student loans, the North Tongu MP said: “To save the students, to give them an interim arrangement, what we are doing is to give them an abated allowance as the Ministry of Health press statement indicated,” adding that the stopgap measure would remain in place while government gets parliament to amend the law prior to the “full implementation” of the student loan reforms.

Rejecting talk that the decision was instigated by the upcoming elections, Mr Ablakwa stated: “I hear talk that government has made a U-turn because of elections. This is no U-turn. We are still implementing the reforms. The policy has not changed; we are only replacing the allowances with student loans. We want that at the tertiary level, the student loan would be what would serve our students”.

Mr Ablakwa said if restoring the allowance were a volte-face by government so would have been done for teacher trainees, but that has not been the case. “So government has made no U-turn, there is no attempt to backtrack or engage in any cowardice,” he concluded.