KATHMANDU, April 29: Medical doctors have shown no or little interest in applying for government jobs to deal with COVID-19. Very few or no applications were made for various positions advertised by the Ministry of Health and Population(MoHP) some five weeks ago.
In an advertisement published on its official website on March 24, the MoHP sought to recruit 134 medical staff immediately to fulfill the gap of human resources to deal with Covid -19. The ministry wanted to recruit seven general physicians, seven anesthesiologists, 20 medical officers, and 100 staff nurses. They were to be recruited on contracts, and “first come first serve basis”.
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According to the MoHP, no anesthesiologists applied for the job though the ministry wanted to recruit seven of them. Only one general physician applied for the job against the need of seven. Also, only 20 applications were made for the post of medical officers out of the 26 needed. However, the applications by nurses provided some solace to the ministry as a total of 248 nurses applied against the need of 100.
However, the ministry has said the recruitment is on hold as there is no serious COVID-19 outbreak in Nepal. "We have not started screening the applications,” Raghu Ram Bista, joint secretary and chief of the administration division at the MoHP said, "We will recruit them once there is a need."
Lack of trained human resources in the government-run facilities is hampering efforts to treat the confirmed cases and contain the outbreak of the coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) in Nepal.
As of 28 April, 54 COVID-19 cases were recorded in Nepal, of which 16 have recovered, according to the MoHP. The country is in the fifth week of lockdown to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. The lockdown will remain in place until 7 May 2020
