The Coalition of Unemployed Private Nurses (COUPN) says the Deputy Minister of Health, Tina Naa Ayeley Mensah lacks the competence to handle her office.

Deputy Health Minister Tina Mensah has told nurses who attended private health training schools that government is just doing them a favour by posting them.

According to her, such nurses are not in the position to mount pressure on the government over their placement because the state has no responsibility towards them.

”One thing that I want to make clear to the private nurses is that we are not under any obligation to employ them, we don’t have any bond or MoU that states that they should finish and we employ them. It’s a favour we’re doing them and not obligatory, I want to make it clear to them that it is not when they come and picket that is when we employ them. When they picket that does not tickle us.” She told Bola Ray on Starr Chat on Starr FM Wednesday.

The comment comes as nurses across the country protest for placement in the wake of the announcement that the state is recruiting health professionals across the country.

Some of the aggrieved nurses are those in the association of graduate nurses who say the government excluded them in the list announcement for recruitment.

But reacting to the Deputy Minister’s comment in an interview with Kasapa News, the spokesperson for the Coalition of Unemployed Private Nurses (COUPN), Doreen Boateng said Hon. Tina Mensah is just not on top of her work.

“This our mother is oblivious of what is happening in Ghana, I’m shocked that as a woman with kids she’ll be talking like this. If she claims that government employing me is just favour, why then do I pay my nursing license to the state. Why does the state set questions for us the private nurses to write our exams and not the private schools themselves setting the questions? I don’t know if she’s not communicating with her boss the Minister of Health. Hon. Agyemang Manu has said within one week we’ll have our clearance but she sits somewhere and says a different thing. I don’t know what is going on in that Ministry, they don’t sing from the same tune.

Doreen Boateng added: Hon. Tina Mensah doesn’t understand her work, she doesn’t even know what she’s talking about. It is in the Ministry of Health Brochure page 11 that the Government of Ghana will employ nurses who attend accredited schools including the private ones. The Ministry of Health also has printed a small booklet which is put in every Public Health Training Institutions that if one does not get admission into government schools, one can enrol in the accredited private schools. It is only the training that we get in private schools, my nursing license doesn’t show the school I attended, it contains my name and the Nursing and Midwifery Council and my registration number. I have to renew my license at GHC500 every year. How then can anybody say he or she will be doing me a favour by employing me.”