Africa-Press – Malawi. The Government of Malawi and Israel have signed new agreements to strengthen the government-to-government arrangement of recruiting workers in Israel.
The agreement will see some nurses being recruited in Israel.
Speaking during the signing ceremony in Lilongwe Monday, Israel Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sharren Haskel said the development was a milestone in strengthening ties between the two countries.
Haskel added that there would only be a government-to-government arrangement in the recruitment of people to Israel, such that any other arrangement was illegal.
“We demanded that these agreements will be government-to-government ones to make sure that they are being legal and what happened in the business sector will not happen. So, we can actually facilitate that,” she said.
Haskel said her country expected the Malawian nurses to offer quality services to the people of Israel.
“This is a great opportunity for Israelis to experience the high-quality care of the Malawian nurses and workers from here [Malawi and also] to exchange in between the cultures as well as to learn a little bit more,” she said.
Earlier, Haskel bemoaned the tendency of some Malawian workers who left farms in Israel and sought asylum in that country.
She said the tendency created challenges with that country’s interior ministry.
“Most of them were saying that there is no freedom of speech in Malawi and that there were human rights issues here. This is why we want the government-to-government arrangement because we believe this will help to avoid such problems,” she said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nancy Tembo said the Government of Malawi would ensure that workers recruited for Israel jobs adhere to conditions of labour agreements.
“We believe that our disciplined nurses will discharge their operations professionally and make the country proud. Our hope is that if the first trench of the nurses to Israel will do well, more and more nurses will be recruited in Israel,” Tembo said.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda has commended the government of Israel for providing Malawi with the opportunity to send health workers there.
“We are grateful for this opportunity because we still have nurses who are yet to be employed. As such, we want to give the nurses an opportunity but we want to make sure that we put all things in place because we have to know the working conditions which they are going to face when they go to Israel and also just to put in a number of things in place and this is going to be done soon,” Kandodo Chiponda said.
After the signing ceremony of the agreements, Haskel made a courtesy call on President Lazarus Chakwera at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe.
She also visited Kamuzu Central Hospital, among other facilities, in the city.
For More News And Analysis About Malawi Follow Africa-Press
