Development Economist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) of the University of Ghana Dr. George Domfeh has questioned the government’s ability to deliver on its campaign promise to restore automatic employment posting for nursing training graduates.
In a Facebook post, Dr. Domfeh revisited the campaign season when a nursing student was captured passionately chanting: “We want immediate posting! that is what we want! John Mahama! John Mahama!”
According to him, the student’s demand captured the high expectations that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) promise had created among nursing and other health trainees.
Dr. Domfeh said he had consistently been sceptical about the feasibility of the policy and that recent developments under the Mahama administration had proven him right.
“I, however, never bought into the promise — and President Mahama has, rather spectacularly, vindicated my scepticism,” he wrote.
“Sometimes, political promises have a funny way of becoming the evidence for the argument you were making all along,” he added.
The promise of automatic posting was a key plank of the NDC’s 2024 campaign.
Then-candidate John Dramani Mahama pledged to restore a system where nurses and other health professionals would be automatically posted to public health facilities after completion of their training, ending years of uncertainty and delayed postings.
President Mahama was quoted during the campaign as saying: “We’ll restore automatic posting so that when you graduate, you’ll be employed as quickly as possible.”
The pledge resonated strongly with nursing trainees, many of whom face long waiting periods after completing their programmes before being absorbed into the public sector.
The NDC linked the policy to its broader health infrastructure plan to complete abandoned and ongoing hospital projects to create more space for the absorption of health workers.
However, Dr. Domfeh’s comments highlight growing concerns about implementation and sustainability, including government’s wage bill capacity, the increasing number of graduates from health training institutions, and the availability of ready facilities to post them to.
His intervention adds to the ongoing public debate about the gap between campaign promises and governance realities, particularly on health sector employment – an issue that remains highly sensitive for thousands of nursing graduates awaiting posting.