HEALTH Services Board (HSB) executive director Ruth Kaseke says plans to “export” thousands of unemployed health professionals from Zimbabwe are still in limbo.
REPORT BY PHILLIP CHIDAVAENZI
This came after the government expressed reservations on the proposed plan to “export” thousands of unemployed nurses to neighbouring countries and elsewhere.
“At the moment there is nothing to talk about. There is no government position yet, so this is still at discussion level because the government has expressed concern over the issue,” she said.
In August last year, the government started working on a draft Memorandum of Understanding seeking to formalise the exportation of nurses to other countries after realising that thousands of health professionals were out of employment after Treasury froze all nursing posts.However, Kaseke said almost 2 000 nurses were employed locally between March and April this year. That translated to 80% of all vacant posts.
HSB human resources director Nornah Zhou said the waiting period for nurses in need of employment was now averaging six months. She said nurses who had completed training by September last year have now been deployed to various health institutions.
“Treasury has allowed us to replace nurses whenever there is need and this is unlike in the past when trained nurses could spend up to two years sitting at home,” she said.
She said they were doing follow ups of all nurses in their data base in a mop-up exercise and had realised that some have been employed by institutions such as the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zimbabwe Prison Services, municipalities and the private sector.
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She said between March and April this year, they had filled over 2 000 posts which included about 1 200 nurses and 795 posts for other health workers.
But Health and Child Welfare acting secretary Davis Dhlakama in March told the Parliamentary Thematic Committee on HIV and Aids that the unfrozen posts were inadequate to take up all the unemployed nurses hence the need for bilateral arrangement with other countries in need of health workers.
