Luvindao admits to 'dangerous' 50% staffing shortfall

Health minister Esperance Luvindao has revealed that the ministry is currently operating at just 50% staff capacity, a situation she described as “very dangerous” due to the strain it places on exhausted healthcare workers.Luvindao made the remarks during a parliamentary session on Wednesday, where MPs posed several questions following her budget motivation. “We need more staff; we need more nurses; we need more doctors, we agree on that 150%. But at the same time, what we now need to do is sit back, go back to the table, my team and I, who are here as well with me, to sit back and say, how can we find a way to accommodate these people? And I want to reassure you that we are doing so actively, and that your concerns have not fallen on deaf ears,” she said.During her budget motivation speech a day earlier, Luvindao said the ministry requires over N$4.6 billion to fill more than 11,700 approved positions. However, only N$150 million has been allocated, enough to fund just 434 posts.“The necessary work was done, however, the current allocation falls far short of what is needed," she said, adding that while the groundwork to create these positions has been completed, the implementation now hinges on financial support.Responding to a parliamentary comment about having to provide a secret formula, Luvindao dismissed the idea. “It is really just basic maths from my side. The reason I say that is because what we highlighted [on Tuesday] was in order to ensure transparency, because a lot of the time the notion that was created is that the ministry is not recruiting 11,000 people. And so that was the basis of [Tuesday] to say that yes, although 11 000 vacancies were created, we are now faced with the fact that we need to find the money for these posts, and that is where we currently stand. It is not a magic wand that I wave to get from 11 000 to 400; it's basic maths calculating the fact that with the current budget that we have been allocated, this is all we can do according to the budget, but not all we will do, and I want to highlight that,” she said.“I highlighted it before previously, I believe it was in Cabinet, to say the reason why I was hired is to try and make a plan. And on the other side, Honourable Job [Amupanda] mentioned to say we need to be creative; we need to find where we can get into partnership, public-private entities get into partnership with. I was talking to someone else saying that I have literally become a professional beggar, because my job is to make sure that where we are unable to meet with a budget, we can then find other ways, other means, and other resources,” she added.On infrastructure challenges, the minister said it is not feasible to construct hospitals across the country simultaneously, given current financial constraints. “I want to highlight that because I know some questions were also posed regarding the hospitals and the pricing thereof. Even looking at the cost of the Windhoek District Hospital, a full hospital, including Computed Tomography (CT) scan machines and all of these other facilities, we are looking at about a billion dollars for one hospital. So you can possibly try to understand the predicament we find ourselves in. Is it an excuse? No, because at the end of the day, we need to find solutions to it,” she said.nikanor@nmh-hub.com.na

Luvindao admits to 'dangerous' 50% staffing shortfall

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-21

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Luvindao admits to 'dangerous' 50% staffing shortfall

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-21

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