Health ministry works with Foreign affairs to prevent experienced health workers leaving
BY MAVIS N PODOKOLO
The ministry of health (MHMS) has devised a way to block senior nurses who are seeking job opportunities outside of the country.
More than a hundred nurses including senior and experienced ones are set to go and work overseas. Many more are signing up, it is reported.
This development is projected to impact the country’s health and medical services.
So, MHMS has reportedly sought help from the ministry of foreign affairs (MFAET) to block current working nurses (both experienced and less experienced) from leaving the country.
Only nurses who have retired, resigned and are no longer in service will be allowed to leave to work overseas, Island Sun was reliably informed.
A senior official in the MHMS admin confirmed this to Island Sun yesterday on condition of anonymity, adding it is the only way MHMS can save this country from this pending mass brain drain of health workers.
MHMS and MFAET officials met yesterday morning to plan out how they will go about this plan, the official said.
More details to this scheme will be made known later, the official said.
Responding to reports of this totalitarian plan by MHMS, nurses who are awaiting confirmation to go and work in Australia say they “will just simply resign and leave”.
“It is our constitutional rights to resign and sign up for overseas jobs despite whatever arrangement is done to hold us back.
“Majority of us nurses decide to tender our resignation if contract is offered,” their spokesperson said.
More than a hundred nurses are furnishing up processes to head abroad for job opportunities, especially Australia.
Many more are showing interest and are signing up to this pathway, which also include countries as far away as Canada, Island Sun was told earlier this week.
Among the reasons behind this pending mass diaspora is government’s harsh and draconian treatment of nurses since their mass strike in November 2020 as the country anticipated covid-19 which was spreading across the world at that time.
Nurses had banded together under their platform, Solomon Islands Nurses Association (SINA), to demand government to improve working conditions and welfare matters.
Government however responded by suspending SINA and charging eight nurses for incitement. In all, 14 were suspended from duty.
Since then, SINA remains suspended, denying nurses in the country a platform through which their voices and concerns can be heard.
Another main reason is the rising cost of living in Honiara and the country, which nurses are feeling the brunt of due to their small salaries and lack of allowances.
