THE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade is concerned that a number of Solomon Islands nurses have absconded their contract in Vanuatu to participate in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme.
A Vanuatu health official last week shared this concern with the Ministry as two nurses are already in Australia working and earning money despite being in the Vanuatu Government Payroll system.
Currently there are around 74 nurses contracted by the Vanuatu Government through its Ministry of Health and serving in Vanuatu.
As shared through MFAET last week, the concern in Vanuatu is that two nurses have absconded their Vanuatu contract without providing any notification or “Notice of termination of contract” and authorities have received information that more are looking to go down the same path.
The Vanuatu Government within the Ministry of Health, highly respects their right to work wherever presents the best financial offer, however, they are also obliged to abide by the Terms and Conditions of the Contracts they have signed with the Ministry of Health – Vanuatu.
The Solomon Islands government, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade is equally concerned about these issues and would like to work collaboratively with Vanuatu’s Ministry of Health to ensure this kind of improper practices by our nurses working in Vanuatu don’t happen again in the future.
