By Merlyn Mwanza
Chairperson of the 800 unemployed doctors Dr Wallace Ndumba says there is no consideration from the government on the psychological torture the health and teaching applicants are going through.
Speaking with Daily Revelation, Dr Ndumba said the applicants were in the dark over what was happening as days have come and gone without realizing the promised employment.
The government in the 2022 national budget has targeted to employ 11,200 health workers and 30,000 teachers.
“What I can on that is that there is no consideration for the psychological well-being of the applicants because under normal circumstances, or ideal circumstances, when the government knows that they are not going to publish the names on a particular date which was communicated earlier, the least they can do is to communicate and explain to the people to say we are not going to publish the names as we communicated due to ABCD reasons. People can understand. But when you just keep quiet it’s more like your don’t care. You don’t bother,” Dr Ndumba said.
He said the unemployed doctors have notified the police for the protest planned for Friday to press government to release the names of successful applicants for employment as health professionals and teachers.
Dr Ndumba said his colleague would be making a follow up with the police tomorrow morning over the notification they have already given the police for Friday protests.
Dr Ndumba said as long as the names are not published by tomorrow, the protests would go ahead.
“What I know is that the protest will still go on because if the police had any issue with our programme they should have communicated already,” Dr Ndumba said, and adding that it will be joint match involving the teachers and health professionals. “So it is going to be conducted north from the Ministry of Education the. From there we are going to march to the Ministry of Health.”
He said the inconsistence in the manner the government have been conducting the process is causing a lot of doubt on whether they are being truthful, pointing to the lack of trust in the whole process, saying the government must simply communicate the true situation to the applicants.
Dr Ndumba said the breakdown in communication was escalating the situation, arguing that the government could not leave people to guess what is going on.
He said it was very difficult for anyone to believe that they were being honest in the whole process.
“Initially it was January. Now we are heading to July we don’t expect to have come this far just talking about the same process. So the best they could have done, even earlier was to tell people to say we are not planning to employ people this time, maybe later in the years we shall communicate,” Dr Ndumba said. “Than telling people to say we are going to employ you very soon, raising hopes in people meanwhile, time is just being dragged by. I think it doesn’t help.”
Dr Ndumba said the government said the funds for enrollments were there but wondered why they were not publishing the names if the funds were there.
“According to them they communicated that funds are there. So we will take their word for it and we shall just pursue them to publish the names. Simple as that,” said Dr Ndumba.
