Health Ministry Unveils Plan to Replace Foreign Hospital Staff, Faces Challenges

TDT | Manama

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The Ministry of Health has a plan to replace foreign workers with Bahraini nationals in government hospitals, according to its response to the parliamentary committee investigating the nationalization of jobs in the public and private sector.

As per the response, 36% of the workforce in government hospitals (1951 employees) are foreign nationals, including 111 doctors, 1738 nurses, 85 support staff, and 17 administrative staff. While 594 Bahrainis were hired between 2020 and 2023, 930 foreign nationals were also hired, resulting in a 44% increase in foreign employment.

However, 672 foreign employees left during the same period. The Ministry attributed in its response the difficulty in replacing foreign workers to a lack of Bahraini applicants, insufficient graduates, retirements of Bahraini staff, and reluctance among graduates to work in government hospitals.

The Ministry's plan, focusing on replacing foreign workers in anesthesiology (29 employees), accident and emergency (21 employees), ICU (10 employees), internal medicine (10 employees), general surgery (9 employees), radiology (9 employees), neurology (7 employees), gynecology (6 employees), orthopedic (4 employees), pathology (4 employees), and HBDC (1 employee), is contingent on securing sufficient budget, maintaining service levels, graduate availability, and accounting for employee turnover, the response stressed.