140 nurses to be employed by government

The government said "no time was lost" to get call for employment for nurses up and running.

Today, the health ministry announced that the 140 nurses who have recently qualified from the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Malta would be called for employment in the coming days.

The 140 nurses have already applied through the recent call for nurses and  the current Public Services procedures to process such applications for employment may take between two to three months to process because of the large number of nurses who need to be interviewed.

The government said that in order to strengthen and further consolidate the present health care services and plan for future developments, both the Ministry for Health and the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity felt the need to recruit these nurses with immediate effect.

The Constitution of Malta allows employees can be engaged temporarily for a period of two months during the process of recruitment and throughout this time interval, these nurses will help to alleviate the current workforce vacancies. 

"At the end of this two month period they will all eventually be employed on a permanent basis following the conclusion of the recruitment process," the government said.

The Ministry for Health pointed out that the mentioned call for Staff Nurses was the most fast-tracked amongst all other calls.

This was issued as soon as the Ministry for Health had financial approval on the 2 August 2013, and the call for Staff Nurses was issued just four days after in the Government Gazette.