The Ministry of Health has said it is not incumbent on it to employ trained nurses from private institutions into Ghanas public health system.

This follows complaints from the  Coalition of Unemployed Private Nurses that government is deliberately refusing private trained nurses from being posted, as only bonded nurses from nursing training colleges are currently being posted.

But in an interview with Pulse.com.gh, the Public Relations Officer of the Health Ministry, Tony Goodman, said the private nurses should exercise restraint as government has an agreement to post the bonded nurses before considering privately trained ones.

"We have bonded with those we are posting. If we are done with the number of people we are bonding with, we will now consider those who were trained at other places. But they had their training elsewhere. It is not incumbent on us to automatically or by all means employ them," he added.

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Hundreds of  the aggrieved private nurses who have not been posted since 2013 picketed at Ghana’s seat of Government - Flagstaff House on Thursday, May 5, 2016 over the matter.

But Mr Goodman said "Last year, we employed a larger number of private trained nurses. This time around we want to clear our backlog, make sure that those we trained are employed before we look at the private ones."