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Mat civic groups threaten to disrupt nurses’ training

A GROUPING of civic groups, under the banner Matabeleland Collective (MC), has threatened to disrupt nurse training lessons at Mpilo and United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) to force government to address reports of unfair recruitment of student nurses at the two institutions.

BY NQOBANI NDLOVU/PRAISEMORE SITHOLE

This comes amid reports that at Mpilo, 20 out of the 24 trainee nurses recruited last week were not from Matabeleland. The same reads for United Bulawayo Hospitals where only four out of the 27 nurse trainees are from Matabeleland.

Mpilo clinical director Solwayo Ngwenya, who also heads the school of nursing, reportedly claimed that the selection process was done in Harare after the introduction of an online nurses’ application portal.

The MC said the move by the Health ministry flies in the face of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s promises, as outlined in the implementation matrix produced after the March engagement at the Bulawayo State House.

Mnangagwa, under the social services cluster, pledged to ensure that government devolves such processes by giving locals first preference in job training or in filling vacant posts.

“MC pledges to shut down some of these training centres if government does not intervene to reverse these unfair practices from these nursing training institutions. MC also urges government to immediately implement devolution of power in order to curb these unfair structural practices that favour other regions over the other,” the MC said in a statement.

On Sunday, Vice-President Kembo Mohadi, while promising redress, condemned the questionable nurse training recruitment at Mpilo and UBH.

“We are not happy and as government, we will address this issue. Government policy is that the recruitment must be done equitably. We don’t want bias in that regard.

“We are going to look into it so that it is rectified,” Mohadi said after a de-briefing on the issue by Bulawayo Metropolitan Affairs minister Judith Ncube at Zanu PF’s Bulawayo Davies Hall provincial offices. Ncube last week also threatened to force the reversal of the “unfair” nurse trainee selection process.

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