CIVIL Service Commission chairperson Peter Mumba says statistics received from various provincial and district data capturing sites indicate that a total of 137,129 applications from health workers have been received.

And Mumba says in the spirit of enhancing fairness and transparency, District Health Directors and Human Resource Management officers will be reshuffled during the screening and shortlisting of applicants.

During a media briefing, Friday, Mumba said 48,920 accounted for professional cadre positions which included persons living with disabilities.

“Statistics of applications received from our various provincial and district data capturing sites, indicate [that] a total of 137, 129 applications have been received with 48, 920 accounting for professional cadre positions which includes persons living with disabilities,” he said.

Mumba said the civil service commission extended the period of data capturing by five days with effect from April 21 to 25.

“I am pleased to inform the general public that our district and provincial health offices across the country have received an overwhelming response from the potential job seekers. Secondly, the district and provincial health offices commenced the applications data capturing on 13th April, 2022 and were scheduled to conclude this process on 20th April, 2022. However, they could not do so due to the huge numbers of applications received. In order to ensure that all applications received are captured, the civil service commission extended the period of data capturing by five days with effect from 21st to 25th April, 2022. This means that all other activities that were scheduled to take place post data capturing have been adjusted accordingly,” he said.

Mumba said Lusaka received the highest number of applications at 31,106.

“The distribution of applications received per province is as follows: Central 15,445, Copperbelt 24,497, Eastern 10,721, Luapula 9,538, Lusaka 31,106, Muchinga 6,777. North -Western 9,423, Northern 7,215, Southern 13,269 and Western 9,138, grand total 137,129,” he said.

“If you look at that grand total, compare it with the 11,276 that we intend to recruit, you will know that things are not okay. Things are bad in terms of unemployment.”

And Mumba said in the spirit of enhancing fairness and transparency, District Health Directors and Human Resource Management officers would be reshuffled during the screening and shortlisting of applicants.

“In the spirit of enhancing fairness, transparency and preventing conflict of interest, the District Health Directors and Human Resource Management officers in the various human resource management sub-committees will be reshuffled during the screening and shortlisting of applicants,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mumba assured the general public that the recruitment exercise shall continue in the subsequent years until the backlog was cleared.

“I wish to reiterate that the government remains committed to conducting a recruitment process that is premised on fairness, transparency and void of all forms of conflict of interest and corrupt practices. This is in order to restore public confidence and trust in the government processes. I wish to assure the general public that the recruitment exercise shall continue in the subsequent years until the backlog is cleared,” said Mumba.