About 17,000 students to be admitted into nursing training institutions – Finance Minister

By Samira Larbie, GNA

Accra, July 19, GNA – About 17,000 new
applicants will be admitted as first year students to the various nursing
training institutions in October this year.

Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance,
who announced this, said sufficient funds allocation had been made in the 2018
budget to accommodate the new entrants.

Mr Ofori-Atta said this in his mid-year fiscal
policy review on the 2018 budget statement in Accra on Thursday.

He said in consonance with the policy to
reinstate the nursing trainee allowances, an amount of GH¢311,988,400.00 was
allocated in the 2018 budget to pay the allowances of 68,000 trainee nurses for
the 2017/2018 and first semester of the 2018/2019 academic year.

“As at end June 2018, GH¢122,400,000.00 has
been released to pay the allowances of 51,000 beneficiary trainees,” he said.

The Minister said the sum of GH¢177,511,600.00
was allocated for the payment of allowances to 49,032 teacher trainees in the
41 colleges of education across the country, out of which GH¢78,451,200.00,
representing 44 percent, was released to pay for the allowances for the second
semester.

He said the National School Feeding Programme
had engaged 8,000 new caterers and introduced new caterer contracting
guidelines, which required caterers to purchase food items from local farmers
and fishermen.

A total of 2,174,000 kindergarten and primary
school pupils compared with the 1,671,777 pupils recorded in 2017, are now
benefiting from the programme making the difference of 501,536.

The Programme was allocated GH¢423,795,500.00,
out of which GH¢229,310,000.00, representing 54.11 per cent had been released.

Mr Ofori-Atta said a sum of GH¢168,369,800.00
was allocated for implementation of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty
(LEAP) programme, out of which GH¢78,293,067.00, representing 46.5 per cent had
been released for the first and second quarters of the year.

He said to date, a total of 550,000 LEAP
beneficiaries have been registered unto the NHIS or have their expired cards
renewed.

Three (3) successive bi-monthly payments have
been made to 213,044 households nationwide from the beginning of the year.

GNA

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