First ever NCLEX exam for nurses pursuing employment abroad in December: Salik

ISLAMABAD, Oct 17 (APP): Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, Chaudhry Salik Hussain on Thursday informed the National Assembly that Pakistan was going to hold its first ever National Council Licensure Exam for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) for certification of nurses pursuing employment abroad in December this year.
In response to the query of Member National Assembly (MNA), Syed Mustafa Kamal pertaining to government strategy to improve human resource exports of the country, total global requirements of Pakistani HR and criteria adopted for the overseas employment.
Chaudhry Salik said over 166 countries have been demanding Pakistani human resource for overseas employment.
In response to the movers supplementary query, he said, “For Nurses, there is NCLEX exam required for UK, US, Australia and few other countries which was not conducted in Pakistan. It is going to be held in December for the first time where over 100 male and female nurses would appear in those exams.”
“The Overseas Ministry has close coordination with National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) which is under the Ministry of Education,” he said, adding that the Ministry had convened master trainers to make up the global demand for semi-skilled and skilled labour.
In next six months, he said many training institutions are upgrading themselves to bring the Pakistani skilled labour at par with global standards.
“We have more demand of unskilled labour as mostly it is from the Middle East and we are approaching them to consider us in the skilled and semi-skilled category as well,” he added.
For Balochistan, he said the least human resource was exported from Balochistan. However, the Ministry had cancelled around 1,200 overseas employment promoters (OEPs) and was doing new agreements with OEPs to ensure implementation of their agreements with the workers sent abroad, he informed.
“Violations would dealt with penalties as previously no securities were demanded for issuing a license but the requirement criteria has been made stringent to control misuse of human resource. Overseas Employment Commission (OEC) has been activated and Korean demand has been fulfilled through the ministry to contain scams,” he said.