Recruitment freeze grounds Mpilo

Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter 

MPILO Central Hospital in Bulawayo is lobbying Government to scrap the staff recruitment freeze in the health sector as hospitals are hamstrung due to staff shortages leading to poor service delivery in public institutions. 

The hospital’s authorities told a Health and Child Care Parliamentary Portfolio Committee which was touring the institution yesterday that they were operating under an adverse environment due to the job freeze.

The Parliamentary portfolio committee was assessing the city’s hospitals’ state of preparedness in dealing with coronavirus (COVID-19)

Mpilo Central Hospital is one of the country’s biggest referral hospitals.

It services the southern part of Zimbabwe covering Bulawayo, Midlands, Masvingo Matabeleland North and South provinces.

The hospital said it has a staff complement of 2 075 employees that translates to a grossly understated 9,8 percent staff shortage.

The staff servicing Mpilo Central Hospital caters for a 1984 population, neglecting that the population has increased to date while the institution has expanded as well.

The hospital is facing various challenges including shortage of medicines and hospital consumables, which are compounded by massive exodus of doctors and nurses who are leaving the country for greener pastures.

Management and senior doctors told the Dr Ruth Labode chaired parliamentary committee how challenges at the hospital were affecting operations.

They said patients are made to wait for long periods to get treatment because of challenges facing the hospital.

Mpilo Central Hospital chief executive officer Mr Leonard Mabandi said the number of nurses leaving their jobs was worrying. 

“I just want the committee to know that the rate at which nurses are resigning at the moment is a bit alarming. The main reason we are getting is that the conditions of service are a bit on the negative that is why nurses are leaving. The committee may also want to know that it in terms of specialists at Mpilo we have an authorised establishment of 44 but we only have 25 with 19 vacant posts. That makes operations a bit difficult. The quality of teaching and the quality of services get compromised,” said Mr Mabandi.

The hospital’s clinical director Dr Solwayo Ngwenya added that while the chief executive officer could have stated that the hospital had a 2 075 staff complement, the figures are understated.

He said Government has not updated the hospital’s establishment since 1984, which determines the number of employees it should have, while the population has increased.

Dr Ngwenya said with the growth in population, the hospital requires more than double the number of people employed at the hospital now.

“Mpilo was built in the 1950s for 250 000 Africans, now we are in 2020 and how many Africans do we have? The same infrastructure, if this can get in your brain that a hospital built for 250 000 is now catering for a population of six million because it takes from Bulawayo’s population, Mat North, Mat South, Midlands and Masvingo and you are still using the same facilities. If you go back to Harare and do not lobby for change of facility, you have not done anything,” he said. 

Dr Ngwenya said instead of having the Ministry of Health and Child Care dictating when hospitals should employ, health care institutions should be the ones leading the process.

He said the job freeze should be abolished as it is crippling operations.

Meanwhile, Mpilo Central Hospital also houses the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) Faculty of Medicine.

The faculty’s Dean Dr Rudo Gwini said the job freeze was also impacting negatively on the growth of the institution.

She said if the job freeze is lifted it will lead to the recruitment of more medical students. 

“We will be grateful if you lobby for the unfreezing of posts for Nust so that we are then able to recruit more. At the moment we have interviewed about 35 consultants and they have not been employed because of the freezing of posts. We are actually under pressure to recruit more students. At the moment we can only enrol 25 students but if we recruit more consultants then we can also increase our intake,” said Dr Gwini.

She said the medical school also requires more infrastructure and equipment to adequately train students as well as improved conditions of services for the lecturers. -@nqotshili