There is a huge surplus of nurses in Meghalaya even as the government is contemplating making learning of foreign languages compulsory for nurses keeping in mind there is a big requirement of nursing care in foreign countries.

Informing this after reviewing the human resource (HR) status in the health sector here today, Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh told reporters that there is a huge surplus of nurses in the state of Meghalaya as there are more nurses against the numbers of jobs that are available.

“Because of this engagement as an entire department going from previous advertisements that were called so we are now of this opinion that we need to look for avenues for these nurses where do you direct these trained individuals or what do they do next with their lives,” Lyngdoh said.

“So the government is going to be engaging with institutions engaging with various agencies that can help us bring gainful employment to these nurses as there are more nurses in the market than what government intake can do,” she added.

Asserting the need to ensure that nurses are compulsorily given an opportunity or made to learn languages or language skill, the health minister said, “For example, we are aware that several foreign countries require nursing care which is not available in their own countries whereas if our nurses who are already very hospitable in nature, very kind in nature, if they can have a language skill opportunity to pick up a language in any European country maybe if they could learn French, if they could learn Japanese (as) I am told very recently that there is big requirement for nursing care, nursing aid in these foreign countries. So we now need to look at this huge unemployment even in this one category alone.”

Referring to the national norms, Lyngdoh said that the state does not have as many sanctioned posts which is about 1500 plus adding that “we are going to be looking at a probable move to ensure that the sanction number of such posts at least as per national norms are already made available.”

“As every time you have to inaugurate a PHC or a CHC that has already been built and when you suddenly come against this hard wall which says there is no sanctioned post. So we must have all of this put in mind because as we move along in the next five years there has been a huge focus kept on funding for improvement of health services post Covid. Now, we must make sure that once these infrastructures start seeing the light of day, they have the necessary manpower that is there,” sha added.

Stating that HR management is very important in the health sector, Lyngdoh said, “I think this is one way we can start seeing a health system which is functioning. We are working on it and today’s meeting is a meeting where we were able to review all of this so that we can perform better.”

She further informed that a dashboard will be created in this regard to better manage the HR in the health sector.

Meanwhile, the health minister informed that there is also a huge number of specialist doctors to be filled up in the state. “I think we are at 177 and the national standard is about 300 plus,” she said.

She also informed that another 50 -60 plus doctors are already going for these specialized courses and said, “Also the new recruit a lot of them at the time of recruitment at that time only they qualified they have also gone for those specialization so this is a very good thing as if you look 10 years down the line I think we will be a better system as compared for last 10 years and this evaluation of ourselves and our system is very important.”