The Sunday Mail
Grace Kaerasora
Government has recruited and deployed at least 1 600 nurses countrywide since April with 700 engaged in July alone.
The recruitment follows a nod by Treasury at the end of 2016 for the Health and Child Care Ministry to employ 2 000 nurses to fill vacancies that were compromising health delivery services.
Health Service Board chief executive Ms Ruth Kaseke said deployment began last month with nurses having assumed duty at the beginning of this month.
“We recruited 900 nurses in April who are already on duty while 700 more were recruited last month and assumed duty on 1 July,” she said. “The nurses were trained between 2012 and 2015. We expected to recruit 400 more nurses in August who will start work on September 1.
“These will be nurses who completed their training between 2016 and 2017. The last recruitment will conclude the 2 000 quota that we were allowed to engage by Treasury.”
Government froze recruitment of nurses in 2011 to contain a ballooning wage bill, but that resulted in a critical shortage of staff in hospitals while over 4 000 qualified nurses remained jobless.
