Government has reduced the number of qualified, but unemployed nurses, to 450 following the unfreezing of posts in the health sector after the outbreak of Covid-19.

Over the years, the number of qualified, but unemployed nurses hovered around 2,000 considering the fact that training institutions continued to train for the public sector.

Recently, government indicated that it was unfreezing about 4,000 post in the health sector, which include for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and many other workers, to help mitigate the impact of Covid-19. Of the 4,000 posts, 1,000 were allocated to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces to also recruit health professionals, while the other posts will be shared among the different health workers mentioned above.

In a statement yesterday, the Health Services Board (HSB) said recruited professionals were drawn from databases kept at the HSB headquarters, provincial and central hospitals.

"We have recruitment databases for professionals kept at HSB and non-professionals databases created and kept by provinces and central hospitals," said the HSB.

"Candidates for both are derived from these databases. Recruitment of non-professionals is thus decentralized to central hospitals and provincial offices."

Candidates trained by the Ministry of Health and Child Care were immediately being deployed whilst those from other training institutions were going through a process of interviews, which might take a little longer.

Some posts are being filled through regrading.

"As for doctors, we have none who are out of employment, unless they are not willing to be employed by government, while we have 450 unemployed nurses after the recent recruitment exercise," HSB.

"We will be able to absorb all qualified doctors, while we might have a challenge in absorbing all unemployed nurses."

Most of the qualified nurses will eventually be absorbed through replacement posts.

As part of the country's response to Covid-19, Treasury agreed to the recruitment of 4,000 health workers and the creation of an additional 200 medical posts.

Recruitment for the posts is underway, with Cabinet recently reporting that over half of the posts had been filled.

The last mass recruitment of unemployed nurses was done in 2018 when all those in employment were fired for participating in an industrial action.