According to the President of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA), Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo, an average Ghanaian nurse on the single-spine salary structure, takes home between GHS2,000 and GHS2,500 a month.
This, she said, is woefully inadequate when compared to the remuneration of their counterparts in higher-paying economies.
In an interview with Keminni Amanor, host of TV3’s Hot Issues programme on Sunday, March 31, Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo also bemoaned the poor conditions under which the nurses provide services, urging stakeholders and the employer to pay critical attention to the nurses.
For the government to succeed in mitigating the menace of brain drain in the country, Madam Ofori-Ampofo stated that it needs to prioritise the needs and concerns of healthcare professionals.
“We are all on the single-spine salary structure. The single-spine salary structure determines your entry level depending on your qualification and the step that you will be on depending on whatever promotion that you get along the line. When you take the whole profession in terms of nurses and midwives, the lowest caders are the auxiliary nurses.
“We have an enrolled nurse who is a certificate holder or a community health nurse who is certificate holder. And on the single-spine, their take-home salary after all deductions hovers somewhere around 2,500 Ghana cedis thereabout,” said Madam Ofori-Ampofo.
Aside from the meagre take-home salary, Ofori-Ampofo further indicated that certain allowances due nurses haven’t been paid for over a long time.
“We are also entitled to categories two and three allowances, and most of the time those allowances are not paid because they’ve all been pushed to the facilities, and the facilities will pay depending on the level of the facility. And whether they are generating IGF [Internally Generated Fund],” she stated.
She added that the government only provides nurses with GHS400 as clothing allowances annually. She said out of the GHS400, the health worker is supposed to sew three uniforms for their work.
The president emphasised the amount should be reviewed in light of the current economic conditions in the country.
“We have made a number of proposals to the employer to say that this is what we deserve as nurses and midwives. If we are able to get them it will help us retain our nurses, those who are eager to migrate outside. It will also help us in motivating us to also do our work.”
Responding to the impact of the recent government base pay increment for all public sector workers, Ofori-Amposo said, comparing the pay increment with indicators like inflation and the dollar exchange rate, the amount is nothing to write home about.
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“You go back to the basics, where are we in terms of inflation? Where are we in terms of the Cedi exchange?
“Where are we in terms of all those indicators for the economy, so you realise that although the money seems to have appreciated, services out there have gone, so you don’t gain anything?” she noted.