Irregularities in HR function

AFTER reading the article on the irregularity of staff recruitment by the department of health in The Herald dated July 13 (“Jobs scandal revealed in health department”), I remembered my own experience with the recruitment negligence at the same department.

A year or two back I saw an advert in the newspaper for a personal assistant for the Dora Nginza Hospital chief executive.

I went there to go drop off my application.

Upon my arrival I enquired about where to drop off my application.

I was then informed that no box had been prepared yet, for the applications for the post had just opened.

Instead the woman I spoke to took my application and put it in a big box filled with applications that had already been closed, but assured me that she would put my application in when the appropriate box was open. (This happened on a Friday.)

I went to the hospital again the following Tuesday with another application because I wanted to ensure that my application was up for selection.

When I got there, to my surprise, there was a box and a list that you signed as evidence that you had applied.

I then resubmitted my application and signed the register.

This really bothered me, as I calculated the logistics involved in putting together an application: going from pillar to post trying to ensure the application was perfect, not to mention the financial cost, especially to an unemployed person.

I then wrote a letter to the hospital chief executive, who followed up with the HR manager, who then responded by saying, the department had issued a moratorium on all non-clinical posts so the post was frozen. Furthermore the department could not send out acknowledgment letters to every applicant.

My point at the time was not that I wanted a letter of acknowledgement, it was to say that there was negligence in the recruitment process.

How many people had their applications thrown into an unknown box, and how many people had posted and had their applications thrown in that same box instead of being filled in on the master list?

Nonetheless, instead of investigating the matter, the manager chose to tell me that the department had the right not to fill the post, which was beside the point.

There are so many obscurities in the government recruitment process.

Things will never be right as long as managers do not oversee the whole recruitment process or understand the importance of recruiting fairly and in line with the relevant labour laws.

I am not surprised by that article.

The same thing has happened to me, I am certain it has happened to someone else too and this will continue to be the norm until sterner measures have been put into place when it comes to recruitment.

Maybe government departments should consider outsourcing the recruitment function of HR because they aren’t doing such a good job of it.