Government has given financial clearance to employ qualified people, including more than 1,000 teachers, into the public sector.

“I have given financial clearance for outstanding public sector employment. This includes more than 1,000 teachers at the tertiary level,” Finance and Economic Minister, Seth Terkper, has revealed in a tweet.

I have given financial clearance for outstanding public sector employment. This includes more than 1000 teachers at the tertiary level.

— Seth Terkper (@SethTerkper) July 22, 2016

The minister however did not give much detail regarding which of the sectors that have been cleared to employ, and exactly how many people to be employed in total.

The announcement comes on the back of agitations by some nurses over government’s failure to employ them after completing their training in March 2014.

The about 3,000 nurses who come under the Coalition for Unemployed Bonded Nurses, Midwives and Psychiatric Nurses have in the last few months been staging demonstrations in Accra to press for their employment.

The government in 2010 placed an embargo on public sector recruitment in order to reduce what it said was increasing wage bill, something that attracted public outcry.

The government later clarified that critical sectors were not affected by the embargo which critics say was part of IMF conditionality to the government in a move to help reduce the public sector wage bill which stood at 73 per cent of Ghana’s taxes in 2013.

President Mahama in a Radio Ghana interview at Ho in August 2015 denied a freeze on public sector employment, saying, “It is not even true that there is a freeze on public employment.”

“We are still employing in strategic areas where we think we need manpower. In the areas where we don’t need, yes we are not employing, so that is the main reason. We are still employing doctors, we are still employing teachers and nurses and so if they say there was a freeze on employment it is not true,” he added.