The Resident Doctors Association of Zambia (RDAZ) has implored, the Civil Service Commission as well as the Ministry of Health to come up with an independent database audit mechanism to publicly outline the selection criteria used in shortlisting of healthcare workers.
RDAZ president Paul Chibwe says professional associations like his organization, the Anti-Corruption Commission and civil society should took take part in the development and the actual carrying out of the audit mechanism.
While supporting the idea of the recruitment of 3205 health workers, Chibwe calls for reforms that would make future recruitment exercises transparent.
He would in turn build and boost trust placed in it by thousands of qualified, dedicated and patient health professionals.
Speaking in an interview with a local publication, Dr Paul Chibwe said the audit mechanism will also help to refresh the recruitment database annually so that newly qualified and registered health professionals are not excluded from consideration.
He added that it will also direct the ACC to actively investigate and prosecute officials involved in database manipulation and bribery.
Dr Chibwe lamented that the database, which ought to be a transparent and objective registry of qualified candidates had instead become a tool through which corrupt officials insert, remove or alter names in exchange for bribes or political patronage.
“It is with deep sadness that hundreds of qualified healthcare professionals have once again been excluded from this recruitment, not on the basis of merit, but through what is widely reported to be deliberate manipulation of the Civil Service Commission database,” Dr Chibwe alleged.
“RDAZ has received consistent, credible and widespread reports from its members that the recruitment database has been weaponized as an instrument of corruption.”
Dr Chibwe claimed that database technical faults are frequently to cover last-minute alterations to the recruitment lists.
“Beyond the database, RDAZ is further concerned about the absence of a publicly accessible shortlisting methodology, the lack of independent oversight of district and provincial Human Resource Management Committees, the continued practice of recruiting from a database compiled years prior,” he said.
Dr Chibwe called on healthcare professionals, who have once again been passed over in the recruitment cycle, not to allow the failures of allegedly corrupt officials to define their worth or diminish their commitment.
He said that RDAZ will continue to engage the government, Civil Service Commission and all relevant stakeholders to ensure that the outstanding pool of unemployed health professionals is systematically absorbed into the public health workforce.
RDAZ called on President Hakainde Hichilema, to personally intervene in this matter.
Dr Chibwe added that President Hichilema has distinguished himself as a fearless and uncompromising champion of transparency, accountability and the fight against corruption, values that define his administration and that Zambia’s health professionals have come to trust.