ZIMBABWE will soon start sending nurses to South Sudan as part of efforts to ease growing unemployment within the profession, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has revealed.
The move, Mnangagwa told parliament last Wednesday, followed government’s decision during the GNU tenure to freeze any further recruitment into the country’s bloated civil service, now estimated to be hovering above half a million.
Mnangagwa revealed the plan in Parliament while responding to a question by Proportional Representation MP Consilia Chinanzwavana who asked if government now had a solution for nursing graduates churned out annually from their training but fail to be absorbed into nursing jobs.
“We are aware that some have now been out of employment for perhaps a number of years but everything is being done now that we continuously take some on board as resources become available,” Mnangagwa said.
“Also, I am aware that there are discussions with countries which have approached us like Southern Sudan which has approached us to have nurses seconded to that country.
“I think that discussion is well advanced and, if the Minister of Health and Child Care was here, he would have been able to articulate that position. From that approach, some of them would be absorbed.”
Mnangagwa said although it was the country’s wish to benefit from its labour force, the move to export its idle personnel was unavoidable.
“At the end of day,” he said, “we would want that the products of our institutions be accommodated in our own economy so that we service our own nation. It does not mean that we do not need their services.
“We critically need their services but because of the constraints of resources in the country and the state of the economy, this is why we cannot absorb all of them.”
Zimbabwe’s economic decay continues to worsen with little by way of remedial action from the country’s rulers.
The now 15-year-old crisis is blamed on President Robert Mugabe’s controversial policies which critics blame for continued job losses.
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