The High Court of Malawi has granted an order to 500 concerned nurses and midwives stopping Ministry of Health from promoting and recruiting healthcare workers deemed unqualified.
Prior to the court order, Nurses and Midwives Council of Malawi chief executive officer Judith Chirembo wrote Secretary for Health Dr. Samson Mndolo on June 30 2025, querying the recruitment and promotion of some healthcare workers she alleged were not qualified.
In the court order dated July 1 2025, High Court Judge Edna Bodole also granted the 500 workers leave for a judicial review of the recruitment decision.
is granted. | Nation
Reads the order in part: “Permission to apply for judicial review be granted. The decision of the defendant [Ministry of Health] in recruiting unqualified candidates for the posts of nursing officer, nurse-midwife technician and community midwife assistant be stayed until any further order of the court.
“The decision of the defendant that the unqualified candidates report for their respective duties on 1st July 2025 be stayed until the court’s determination of the substantive matter.”
Bodole further ordered that hearing of the substantive matter for judicial review should be expedited and heard by a single judge in an open court.
On the other hand, in the June 30 letter, Chirembo said the council noted with concern the recruitment and promotion of some workers who are not qualified and not registered or licensed to practice as nurses and midwives.
She said: “Alarmingly, a number of them have recently written the June 2025 licensing examination, indicating that they participated in recruitment processes prior to being eligible to practice. Others are not reflected in the council’s database.
“Furthermore, there are cases where individuals holding degrees in unrelated fields have been promoted to positions such as nursing or midwifery officer despite lacking the requisite nursing or midwifery qualifications and competencies at that level.”
Chirembo said recruitment of unlicensed individuals undermines the integrity of the profession besides contravening regulatory standards.
One clinician who opted for anonymity but has been placed at one of the country’s referral hospitals said authorities are refusing to assign them work due to lack of offer letters.
“They are saying they cannot allocate us a department without offer letters and it is day three of being here and today [Wednesday] after 12 noon, they will no longer assist us since the Human Resources Department will get papers for payroll processing,” said the clinician.
Another prospective worker said they continue spending money on transport to the facility while officials want them to travel to Capital Hill and get offer letters themselves, which is “retrogressive and economically punitive.”
Reacting to the development, Human Resources for Health (HRH) chairperson Solomon Chomba blamed government for not engaging professional bodies to help in the screening process during recruitment.
“We asked the ministry to engage professional bodies, but they did not. They didn’t even engage us as HRH because we have the list of all those who are qualified. Now you have people who qualified a long time ago left out, but they recruit unlicensed ones,” he said.
According to Chomba, about 2 400 healthcare workers were recruited during the first phase with others expected to be recruited soon.
Ministry of Health spokesperson Adrian Chikumbe said they are aware that some unqualified candidates were missed during screening at interviews.
“The ministry is checking and ensuring that candidates produce all relevant documents otherwise their appointments are not being processed. The ministry already issued a communique to respective hospitals not to process all unqualified candidates on the payroll,” he said.
Advertised positions are for grades H, K and I. They include senior medical officers, dental surgeons, nuclear medicine technologists, prosthetics and orthotics technologists, environmental health officers and nurse midwife technicians, among others.
In April this year, government announced its intention to recruit healthcare workers in 34 cadres nationwide, a move which healthcare workers’ groups said demonstrated commitment to strengthening the health systems.
