By:Nguriye Katusuva
Executive Director of the Ministry of Health and Social Services Ben Nangombe says the ministry is not in a position to recruit everyone that worked as a volunteer during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This comes after the Covid -19 volunteers submitted a letter on Friday to the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relation and Employment Creation in which they laid the matter against the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
The volunteers demanded that the ministry give all of them permanent job positions or extend their contracts.
According to Nangombe, it is not possible to concede to the demand as the ministry does not have the money to recruit all volunteers.
He further added that the ministry can only recruit some members in a limited number of positions, and only if they are funded and vacant.
“You can only give placement to people where you have positions that are funded for and the ministry has received authorisation. When the contracts ended, the ministry visited the Prime Minister’s office to request for assistance for a permanent recruitment of workers on vacant positions, yet not all volunteers will get permanent job positions,” he told The Villager.
Nangombe claimed to have not received any letter of which the volunteers laid their demands as he was working out of his office.
The over 1,400 volunteers’ contracts lapsed in September last year. At the time, Nangombe said lay-offs were done as the Covid-19 situation in the country had slowed down.
In November last year, the same volunteers were called back to work, however, that temporary arrangement also came to an end in December.
The Covid -19 volunteers say they previously wrote a letter with their demands to the health ministry, but received no response. This was before their latest attempt through the labour ministry.
According to the spokesperson of the volunteers, IsaiFestus Shakua, they have tried engaging Nangombe’s office through a letter in which they had set out their demands. This, he says, was after the volunteers’ contracts ended last year in December after a month’s extension.
“We visited the Ministry of Labour and submitted our complaints against the Ministry of Health and Social Services, and a meeting is to be set up between the volunteers and the ministry in a month’s time of which this matter should be addressed and both parties reach a proper solution,” he said.
“The Ministry of Health and Social Services continues to recruit some volunteer workers and leave others behind,” Shakua said, stressing that their main demand is for all of them to be employed permanently.