The government will not honour any financial commitments, including those made by the previous administration, if doing so would threaten the fragile economic recovery, according to Felix Kwakye Ofosu, a spokesperson for the government.
Speaking on PM Express on JoyNews, Abura-Asebu-Kwamankese MP addressed the ongoing nationwide strike by members of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA).
He stated that although government respects their role, “you cannot spend what you don’t have.”
“We took over power, looked at the condition of service, and the Finance Ministry came to the view that the quantum of resources required to meet those conditions would create some difficulty for the national budget,” he said.
“So there was a need for further engagement,” he added.
He said the government had asked the GRNMA to accept a revised timeline, deferring the implementation of their conditions of service until 2026, a proposal the association has flatly rejected.
“The truth is, it is not in the 2025 budget,” he stressed. “To proceed with it would mean taking on an unbudgeted expenditure. That is a major risk we are not willing to take.”
According to Mr. Kwakye Ofosu, the estimated cost of the nurses’ demands is over GH¢2 billion annually, an amount he said government simply cannot absorb without creating a destabilising fiscal deficit.
[embedded content]“You don’t put something in the budget just because you’ve met it,” he said in response to questions about why the commitment, though part of the transition notes, was not reflected in the current financial plan.
“There are many things we inherited that we couldn’t continue because they were done irresponsibly.”
The MP emphasised that government is a continuum but not a blind executor of past decisions. “Governments change for a reason,” he said. “Where we see difficulty arising from a decision, we must correct course.”
He maintained that the government still hoped to engage the nurses and reach a new agreement that meets their expectations “to a significant extent” without compromising economic stability.
“We cannot take unilateral decisions,” he noted. “We need to engage our social partners. We still retain hope that the nurses will return to the negotiation table.”
On the impact of the strike, Mr. Kwakye Ofosu acknowledged the disruption and said measures were being taken to minimise patient risk.
He revealed that the Health Minister had directed patients to alternative health facilities not affected by the strike.
“These include private institutions and public facilities whose staff are not part of the industrial action,” he said.
The GRNMA’s strike followed a failed emergency meeting with the Ministry of Health on June 9.
The association has refused to accept government’s request to delay the enforcement of the agreed-upon conditions of service.
But Kwakye Ofosu defended the government’s position, warning against what he called “reckless financial decisions” that could undo years of economic correction.
“We all saw what happened when government after government racked up unbudgeted expenditures,” he said. “That’s how we ended up with the debt and the hardship. We can’t go back there.”
In his final remarks, the MP repeated the government’s stance: “We will not implement conditions of service that will throw the budget out of gear. We owe it to Ghanaians to be fiscally responsible.”
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