By Staff Reporter
Chairperson of the 800 unemployed doctors Dr. Wallace Ndumba has suggested that government must regulate the number of training institutions and also regulate the number of enrollments in medical schools, given the challenges being faced in employing the health professionals.
And Dr Ndumba who led protests to have all the 800 doctors employed, with the government insisting that only 500 will be employed this time around, said it was important to compromise sometimes.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Dr Ndumba said information was that the government would start sending letters to the successful applicants next week.
However, Dr Ndumba said after the employment of the 500, 300 will be left unemployed plus another over 150 (though not sure if they will first have to write the introduced exams) he said recently graduated from the Copperbelt University, bringing the total number to 450, plus the unaccounted numbers which will graduate from the others schools, given that this was just mid-2022.
Dr Ndumba said the requirement for graduating doctors to work with government institutions must not be removed, saying it was important for gaining experience with the senior doctors, but that it needed to be reviewed to find better ways of how it can be sustained.
He said the private sector could not for instance take the junior doctors because of business concerns.
He urged the government to prioritize health care because as at now, the doctor to patient ratio in Zambia was 1-12,000, compared to the recommended 1-1000 by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Dr Ndumba said the government should prioritise employing all the doctors who are currently being trained, as the country was already far much behind the recommended levels.
Dr Ndumba provided some proposals on how the system could be regulated so that there were no more doctors roaming the streets after graduating.
“So the number will continue increasing (of the unemployed doctors). So probably what should be done is the government should move in. If they are having a big challenge to sustain employment of doctors despite us falling behind recommended ratio, they should move in to 1) regulate the number of training institutions,” Dr Ndumba said. “Then also they should guide training institutions to say in this particular period of time you can only enroll this particular number. Instead of just letting it open like that where institutions enroll as many as they wish and then when those doctors are trained expecting to be employed and then they are made to roam the streets, which is not good.”
He said the demand at first was to have the 800 protesting doctors to be employed, but that since the government insisted that only 500 would be needed this time around, they were yet to find out what would be the plan with those who would be left out.
“We can’t insist because earlier it was indicated by them that they will not take up all the 800. Even in the advert, the slots advertised there if you check is not 800, it’s somewhere 500. So that’s why we said we are going to encourage our members to apply and then we will see the outcome. Then after the process is done then we will endevour to find what what will be the plan for those that will be left out,” said Dr Ndumba. “It’s not really about the objective not being realised. Yah! We are still determined to ensure that all the 800 doctors are employed, except that in this case you know certain things you have to compromise of course. We did indicate the reasons why all the 800 doctors should be employed but on the government side they said they don’t have enough resources to take everyone at once. So it’s just a difference in timing. So apparently they will take the fire group this time and then the other group will find out what is the plan for them.”
