With nursing emerging as a lucrative profession for an average Keralite, government agencies have now set a new benchmark in recruiting nurses to various countries.
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Two government agencies — NoRKA-Roots, the field agency of the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NoRKA), and ODEPC (Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants), a Kerala government undertaking — have together recruited 12,788 nurses to various countries, including those in Europe, over the years.
While ODEPC has been engaged in the recruitment of nurses for long, NoRKA-Roots jumped into the bandwagon recently following the huge demand for nurses from the State in foreign countries. While NoRKA-Roots recruited 2,540 nurses for various countries in the past five years, ODEPC recruited 3,095 nurses in six years, including the first two quarters of the current fiscal.
“Germany has been recruiting nurses from Kerala on a large scale through government agencies. We have already sent a team of 109 nurses to Germany and another batch of 752 nurses is undergoing language training here. Further, NoRKA-Roots entered into agreements with government agencies from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Maldives, Canada, the U.K., Germany and so on recently for recruiting nurses,” said K. Harikrishnan Namboothiri, NoRKA Roots Chief Executive Officer.
Asked if the strained relation between Canada and India would affect the recruitment, he said: “the issue with Canada has been there for quite some time and now it has reached a flash point. But this will not affect our bilateral trade and manpower recruitment. A Canadian delegation will soon visit the NoRKA office in connection with the recruitment. We ensure affordable and organised health-care migration from Kerala,” said Mr. Namboothiri.
“A good number of foreign countries that approached the government agencies here are recruiting nurses in three different modes. One is the straight migration of nurses with employers recruiting them directly. In the second model, the government agencies in the recipient country will select the nurses from here first, and then the recruits will be skilled by NoRKA by imparting language skills before being sent to the destination. The third is recruitment and skilling by the recipient country. This is a win-win-win model where the recipient country, our country, and the recruits benefit equally,” added Mr. Namboothiri.
The global reputation of Kerala nurses has helped the government agencies enter into agreements with foreign employers for recruiting nurses from here. “Apart from giving training in IELTS and the OET exams, the ODEPC is giving training in German and Dutch here to facilitate migration to Europe,” said Anoop K.A., managing director, ODEPC, adding that the nurses’ recruitment had received a good momentum in the past five years. Individual migration to various countries would be 5-10 times the migration through the government agencies, according to experts.
