Papua New Guinea's MOROBE health authority has about 860 vacancies, of which 400 were advertised this year, attracting 6,000 applicants and the remaining number will be advertised next year, an official says.
Authority chief executive officer Dr Kipas Binga announced during the Lae Unitech School of Nursing graduation on Tuesday that it badly needed health workers.
The appointment is done by the Health Department, therefore, Binga said that it included a lot of processes to get the position advertised.
“We could not do it early, because there are a lot of processes we need to get through to get our positions advertised,” he said.
“After two years of going to and fro to the department and, eventually, we got our positions advertised.
“This year, we advertised 400 positions, and we got 6,000 applicants and 460 will be advertised next year.”
Based on the authority’s internal data, there were about 365 health facilities across the province, and about 45 per cent were closed.
Binga said the closures were due to shortage of health workers, run-down infrastructures along with medicine shortages.
“Hope the advertised positions should open up some closed facilities,” he said.
“Seventy per cent are more infrastructure problems and 30 per cent are human resource problems.”
Health Department secretary Dr Osborne Liko highlighted that the health sector faced a huge problem with the workforce.
Health Minister Dr Lino Tom emphasised that the health workforce was the number one priority.
He said the sector needed health workers, but the budget could only cater for some because the allocated budget was to support all divisions within the sector, which included infrastructure and medicines.
TheNational/PNGhealthNews
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