Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh on Wednesday said there is a huge surplus of nurses in the state of Meghalaya.
Speaking to reporters, Lyngdoh said that there are more nurses than the number of jobs that are available.
“Because of this engagement as an entire department going from previous advertisements that were called, we are now of this opinion that we need to look for avenues for these nurses where do you direct these trained individuals or what do they do next with their lives. So the government is going to be engaging with institutions engaging with various agencies that can help us bring gainful employment to these nurses as there are more nurses in the market than what government intake can do,” she said.
The health minister also emphasized the need to ensure that nurses are compulsorily given an opportunity or made to learn languages or language skill.
“For example, we are aware that several foreign countries require nursing care which is not available in their own countries whereas if our nurses who are already very hospitable in nature, very kind in nature, if they can have a language skill opportunity to pick up a language in any European country maybe if they could learn French, if they could learn Japanese (as) I am told very recently that there is big requirement for nursing care, nursing aid in these foreign countries. So we now need to look at this huge unemployment even in this one category alone,” she said.
Lyngdoh said that the state does not have as many sanctioned posts which is about 1500 plus adding that “we are going to be looking at a probable move to ensure that the sanction number of such posts at least as per national norms are already made available.”
She said, “As every time you have to inaugurate a PHC or a CHC that has already been built and when you suddenly come against this hard wall which says there is no sanctioned post. So we must have all of this put in mind because as we move along in the next five years there has been a huge focus kept on funding for improvement of health services post Covid. Now, we must make sure that once these infrastructures start seeing the light of day, they have the necessary manpower that is there.”
According to her, HR management is very important in the health sector. “I think this is one way we can start seeing a health system which is functioning. We are working on it and today’s meeting is a meeting where we were able to review all of this so that we can perform better.”
She informed that a dashboard will be created in this regard to better manage the HR in the health sector.