Government to recruit 2 000 nurses

UNEMPLOYED trained nurses should register for deployment at the nursing schools they trained following the unfreezing of over 2 000 posts for registered general nurses, the Government has said.

Health and Child Welfare Minister Dr Henry Madzorera yesterday said the Ministry of Finance unfroze 811 posts for RGNs, which fell vacant due to deaths, resignation or retirement of incumbents.

The job freeze policy renders a post left by a permanent employee who resigns or dies automatically frozen.

The particular institution affected would then have to apply to Treasury first before filling the post.

Minister Madzorera said the Ministry of Finance has since opened 1 269 posts for state certified nurses.

He said this would enable Government to cater for some of the RGNs who are unemployed.

"In total, we have over 2 000 RGN posts that are now available. What we are doing now is to fill these vacancies with our trained, unemployed RGNs who qualified a long time ago. We start with those who qualified in 2009, 2010, 2011 before we come to those who qualified in 2012," he said.

"We are encouraging all trained nurses who are unemployed to go back to the schools where they trained immediately and register that they are still available."

Minister Madzorera said the Government was looking forward to deploying the nurses in a few weeks to various institutions countrywide.

He, however, said it was difficult to tell the number of unemployed nurses as some are in the private sector or could have left the country.

The job freeze policy was effected in 2010, but gave a leeway for institutions to apply for exemptions in exceptional circumstances.

There are an estimated 4 000 jobless nurses, according to Minister Madzorera.

According to the ministry, workload in the health sector has significantly increased due to epidemics such as HIV and Aids, cancers, cholera among others.