Malawian nurses, who are applying for jobs abroad due to the country’s huge unemployment rate, have asked President Lazarus Chakwera to intervene and prevent the Labour Ministry from prohibiting them from taking up jobs in the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The National Organisation of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi (NONM) had announced the plan a month ago, saying the nurses were forced to take jobs abroad due to skyrocketing unemployment in Malawi.
Shouts Simeza, president of the nurses’ union, said the decision to seek jobs outside the country came because 3 000 trained nurses in Malawi are unemployed.
He said an initial arrangement was that the first group of 1 000 nurses would leave for Saudi Arabia this month. The plan was to send 1 000 each year for a five-year project.
But the healthcare brain drain raised concerns, and on 2 August, the Ministry of Labour ordered that the plan be cancelled, saying the union has no legal mandate on “labour migration”.
Malawi’s Labour Minister Vera Kantukule told VOA that the decision to suspend the plans was made after considering that NONM is “just a union of medical workers”.
However, the union has protested the order, and urged Chakwera to intervene.
Kantukule said there was a need for a memorandum of understanding between the countries where the nurses are going to work and the Malawi Government, before the nurses’ union could proceed with its plans.
Malawi was “among the countries where the World Health Organisation has put restrictions on medical workers’ migration”, added Kantukule.
Simeza said he was surprised by the Ministry’s position.
“The Minister cannot cancel this thing, and has no mandate to tell us we don’t have the mandate. In fact, it was the government that identified us as NONM to facilitate this … Lazarus Chakwera talks about a job creation campaign. That’s exactly what we are doing.”
VOA News article – Malawi Government Stops Plans to ‘Export’ Unemployed Nurses (Open access)
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