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Medical doctors and dentists will from next year be employed under a quota system according to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare.

The newly-trained doctors he said, will no longer be posted but will have to apply to the regions and sail through an interview process for them to be engaged.

“It has been observed that most young medical doctors and dentists are reluctant to accept postings to work in such needy areas after their housemanship. On that note, this year, we’ve started interviewing doctors; we’re not posting them anymore and next year, we shall give quotas to regions,” he said while addressing the 2017 graduation and oath swearing ceremony for the School of Medical Sciences, Dental School and the School of Veterinary Medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.

Reacting to this in an interview on Citi FM’s eyewitness news Monday, Prof Agyeman Badu Akorsa, former head of the GHS lauded the idea but hoped it will not just be ‘on paper’.

He said “one of our problems” as a country is implementing an idea that has been written but hoped this particular one will be implemented.

“It is important at this stage that everybody that is trained is made available to this country. We have clearly indicated many years ago that every specialty must even have quotas so that every hospital knows that I can employ one Gynecologist, I can employ one Pediatrician….that is what should happen so that now the facility advertises and they appoint; I hope that it will be implemented. One of our problems is that all these things will be fine on paper and then when it comes to implementation it becomes boxed…I hope for once it will work. It should be implemented to the latter. I pray to God it works” he said.