BUCHANAN, Grand Bassa – Foreign Minister Gbehzohngar M. Findley has promised to construct one unit of the nursing quarter at the Compound One Clinic in Grand Bassa’s first district.

On Monday, Findley’s acting farm manager, Lawrence Williams, made the disclosure to The Bush Chicken in Buchanan.

Williams, who is also the head of the Unity Construction Company which built the clinic in 2015, said the foreign minister plans to construct one unit of the nursing quarters amid numerous calls from workers that they need better housing facilities.

The clinic was constructed by the county in 2015 without a nursing quarter and nurses at the clinic who originate from outside the community must rent rooms in nearby communities.

Williams said while the construction of nursing quarter was not part of the construction plan given to him by county authorities in 2015, the living space would be essential in allowing staff to be present at the facility in case of emergencies and for safety reasons.

“The nurses face lots of difficulty in terms of housing. More of them live in Harbel and far away from the clinic,” he said. “So in the night, the citizens find it difficult in the district. When there is a problem, there is no way to locate them [the nurses]. So we sometimes take patients to Buchanan and Monrovia.”

He said the unit will contain three rooms and Findley estimated it would cost US$30,000. He added that the minister is also negotiating for medicine for clinics in the district.

Gift Togba, who manages the clinic, has long called on the government to construct a nursing quarter. She had argued that three units need to be built and with Findley’s donation, two units will still need to be constructed.

Findley was previously a senator of Grand Bassa.

Featured photo by Sampson David