The Ministry of Health has sounded the alarm on the growing number of unemployed health workers in the country, attributing the situation to the unchecked expansion of private health training institutions.
According to the Ministry’s spokesperson, Tony Goodman, the private institutions are admitting large numbers of students without aligning their training with the actual staffing needs of the country’s health sector.
Speaking on Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, May 29, 2025, Goodman stated, “You have various private training institutions that, because they have to run their institution and make a profit to be able to pay teachers, would admit and lot of numbers, churn them out, and tell the Ministry of Health to recruit them.”
Goodman emphasized that the Ministry trains health professionals based on specific regional and national requirements, but many private institutions do not follow the same demand-driven model.
This, he said, has contributed to the current backlog of nearly 100,000 unemployed health workers, many of whom have been waiting for employment for up to five years.
“We cannot recruit everybody this year; that is going to be suicidal. We have nearly 100,000 individuals who are currently at home and have not been employed for five years. So, we cannot use a year to recruit all of them,” Goodman explained.
The Ministry’s concerns come on the heels of the Parliamentary Committee on Sanitation and Water Resources’ urging the Ministry of Finance to release funds for the immediate posting of over 2,000 Environmental Health Officer graduates, who have been unposted since 2021. These graduates are expected to help tackle the country’s worsening sanitation crisis.
The situation highlights the need for a more demand-driven approach to health training, aligned with the country’s actual staffing needs.