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Govt. will recruit from any part of the world to staff 12 new hospitals -Jagdeo
Kaieteur News- Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday reiterated President Irfaan Ali’s call for Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony to recruit professionals from any part of the world to staff the 12 new hospitals that are being built.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.
Speaking at his weekly press conference held at Freedom House on Robb Street, Jagdeo told reporters that the government is building 12 new hospitals, six of which will be operational by the end of this year.
“We are rehabilitating…US$30M rehabilitation of the Linden hospital. So even if we don’t put down a new one, we’re modernizing the others. We now have a plan…we’re going to launch these six new hospitals before the end of the year…you’re going to have six new hospitals with CT scans,” he disclosed.
The Vice President noted that this means that there will be a need for 18-20 technicians to just operate the CT Scans machines. Though persons are being trained to use the machines, more are needed.
“The president has said clearly to Minister Anthony, recruit from any part of the world. We want when these hospitals come into operation, that our people can walk in and get the best service it would have…this is not PPP or APNU or AFC. We don’t do a litmus test, who goes to our hospitals…We want them to get the best quality,” he stressed.
Jagdeo made it clear that if there are not enough nurses or technicians then Guyana will import them to bridge the skills gap. He said despite the human resource challenges, the government must continue to pursue paths that will benefit the citizens.
“That’s not the way you work. You have to build it and work at fixing the personnel problem, and you have to fix the management problem. We already know many of the hospitals are not properly managed… so the management support will come from Mount, Sinai, Northwell, etc.,” he said.
On January 13, Kaieteur News reported that the Government of Guyana may have to ‘steal’ nurses with attractive recruitment packages to be able to adequately staff the new hospitals that are to be built in the future. At that time, the Vice President was asked by the media if he thought “the government would be able to reverse the tide with respect to the bleeding of nurses that we have been seeing over the years?”
In response, the Vice President said, “The same way our nurses are being stolen, I think we may have to do some of this policy ourselves. You have some registered nurses around the world, that’s how we may be able to recruit too, at pretty competitive rates. Nearly competitive with what we pay a nurse now here and we have to explore all sorts of things to keep our hospitals going.”
He explained that the government would have to “bring in people”.
“We have some people now from other parts (of the world but), we should in the outer years, when our income levels go up significantly when you can sustain it from a predictable flow, we should be able to do that,” Jagdeo explained.
(Govt. will recruit from any part of the world to staff 12 new hospitals -Jagdeo)
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