Indian nurses in UAE may lose jobs over new requirement

Dubai: Hundreds of Indian nurses diploma certificates in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were at risk of losing their jobs due to a new educational requirement, a media report said.
More than 200 nurses have already lost their jobs, while several others have been demoted after the UAE made a bachelor’s degree in nursing as the minimum educational qualification for registered nurses, the Gulf News said in the report on Monday.
According to some of the affected, nurses with diploma certificates, who continue to be retained, were required to do a Post Basic BSc Nursing Programme from universities in the UAE accredited by the Ministry of Education (MoE) by 2020.
However, several nurses, who have enrolled for the programmes in different universities, were now facing another crisis — their requests for equivalency certificate for their diploma certificates were getting rejected.
The MoE is issuing equivalency certificate for diploma certificates obtained from the state of Kerala, the nursing council of which is the only Indian nursing body recognised by the ministry, the affected nurses said.
Kerala sends the highest number of nurses to the country.