Story by Abigirl Tembo
GOVERNMENT says the decentralisation of the recruitment process for nurse training programmes is meant to promote transparency and fairness.
Amid a huge demand for nurse training positions across the country, ZBC News spoke to the Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Douglas Mombeshora on measures to ensure transparency on the selection of eligible candidates.
For Dr Mombeshora, the current huge demand for the training programme has created an environment conducive for corruption.
“When you deal with anything where there is a shortage, corruption is likely to thrive. Now in nursing, we pay our student nurses and the moment one is registered as a student nurse, they are actually put on salary, so this is employment and now there is a great demand for places to go for training in nursing,” Dr Mombeshora said.
“In September last year, there were more than 5 000 applicants to Parirenyatwa, while at Harare Hospital they wanted 35 students and there were more than 8 000 applicants. That is where the problem comes now, some start offering money to those in charge and those who are weak will take the money.”
However, the government’s decision to decentralise the recruitment process is meant to foster transparency and fairness in the recruitment process for nursing students.
“What we have done now is we have gone back to say let’s decentralise because those that would be recruited, everything was being done centrally and we say it is not possible to go through all the applications.
“So we said let’s take it back to the provinces and let’s take it to the training school to be able to do the interviews for those who have applied directly to that school, they will only tell us here the number of students that they have taken and the names that they have taken so that those can now be employed,” Dr Mombeshora said.
The government has introduced a policy requiring a certain percentage of students to come from the district where the nursing school is located.
This move aims to promote local representation and reduce the influence of external factors.
