The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
GOVERNMENT will soon introduce a quota system that will see a certain number of student nurses trained to serve in their own provinces and districts, as authorities move to further decentralise the recruitment process.
Student nurse recruitment has over the years been marred by corruption, with prospective applicants extorted into paying large sums of money just to get into the interview process.
In 2019, the Ministry of Health and Child Care Ministry introduced an online nurses’ application forum after investigations by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission concluded there were unacceptable levels of bribery in the old system.
Speaking during a Question and Answer session in the National Assembly on Wednesday, Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Dr John Mangwiro said under the new system, every district would contribute at least one nurse to serve their local community.
“Now, we are going to decentralise the recruitment to provinces down to districts. Each province is going to be assigned its recruitment and its quota system. By quota system it means we are decentralising to provinces and districts so that people select. At least every district must have a child. Even if the places are 200, we will divide that 200 by our ten provinces and say 20 should come from Matabeleland North, 20 from Manicaland and so on. This is what I mean by quota system. This is what we are going to be doing in the future because we have seen all other systems are a bit unfair,” Dr Mangwiro said.
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