Report by Nana POKU
The Honourable Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awua, has stated that
there is no law in the country to force the government to employ nurses, doctors, and teachers after their
training.
He made this statement when he met the Press at the Minister's briefing in Accra yesterday to give
account of his steward.
He explained that there's no law or Act of Parliament that obliges any government to absorb these
categories of people but as a matter of social contract.
"Let me say that for the purposes of fulfilling a social contract with the trainees after spending on them,
the government has no obligation to employ them. This is because the government has spent money on
these people, so it must employ them as a matter of reciprocity. They must pay back for the monies spent
on them," he intoned.
The Minister opined that the government is trying hard to export these people for foreign exchange
through bilateral agreement with other countries who need their services.
"You see, the government cannot employ all these trainees because there are few vacancies available
because they are limited in government spaces. So government cannot employ everybody; that's why we
have the backlog of nurses and teachers,“ he said.
The minister was of the view that the time has come for Ghanaians to accept the reality and appreciate
the effort of the government for absorbing these people by employing the large number of the backlog
since 2017.
