The Ministry of Health has expressed alarm over the rising number of unemployed health workers in the country, pointing to the unregulated growth of private health training institutions as a major contributing factor.
The concern follows calls by the Parliamentary Committee on Sanitation and Water Resources for the Ministry of Finance to release funds for the immediate posting of over 2,000 Environmental Health Officer graduates who have been left idle since completing their training in 2021, despite a worsening national sanitation crisis.
These sanitation officers are part of a broader group of trained health professionals across various disciplines who have remained unposted for up to five years.
Ministry spokesperson, Tony Goodman, explained that while the Ministry enrols and trains health workers based on the sector’s staffing needs across regions, many private institutions operate outside this framework.
He said these institutions admit large numbers of students each year without aligning their output to the country’s actual health workforce demand.
“We’re dealing with nearly 100,000 trained but unemployed health professionals, many of whom have waited five years for posting, it’s simply not feasible to recruit all of them within a year, it would be overwhelming,” Goodman revealed.
He added, “Private institutions admit large numbers to sustain their operations and generate profit, but then expect the Ministry to absorb all graduates, regardless of actual staffing needs. This mismatch is at the heart of the current employment backlog.”
