Student Nurses Cry Out� Pay Our Allowances

Student nurses all over the country are up in arms against the government, demanding that their allowances be paid immediately. The students in an interview with this paper lamented that the current economic hardship in the country has made life very difficult for them on campuses and has thus asked the president to intervene for their allowances to be paid. �We (nurses) have not received our allowance for the past 21 months and most of us are from poor and less-endowed families who are struggling through school to contribute our quota to the country�,� they lamented in the interview. Nursing students in the country are entitled to allowance which is meant to cushion them through their study period. But the students claim they have not received any of their monthly allowance since August 2012. �As it is now we are left with barely a month to end the fourth semester and up till now the clearance form has not been released by the ministry of finance to the various health training schools. We have had a lot of assurances from the health ministry but yet the situation remains unchanged,� they indicated. The effects of which the students say has led to most of them living as paupers on campuses and some dropping out of school. �The cost now for training has increased; school fees, learning materials, cost of transportation and feeding during internal and external clinical has become a burden on our parents not forgetting the risk involved whiles working on the ward trying to care for the sick�.� The most worrying thing, they said, is that most of them borrowed monies to pay their admission and school fees, buy text books with the hope that their allowance would be paid soon to enable them pay back their debts, hence the delay has incapacitated them making it difficult for them to settle their creditors. The students who pleaded anonymity due to the fear of victimization told this paper that the absence of the allowance makes it difficult for them to purchase teaching materials and also pay their bills. They therefore described the delay as �unnecessary an unfair.� �On admission, we were made to sign a bond with the government through the ministry of health that while the government pays our tuition and full allowances throughout our training programme, we are also bonded upon completion to serve for full four years, which we gladly signed and there was nothing like half payment or half service,� the students stressed. They however rejected the argument by the health minister that government would pay 50% of their allowances. According to them, government did not state in the contract that only 50% of their allowances would be paid them. The students have thus called on opinion leaders including the First Lady, Chief Justice, Parliamentarians and Pastors to add their voice to their calls and plead with government to settle their allowances.