Nova Scotia, one of the territories in Canada, offered jobs to 65 refugees from a camp in Kenya as continuing care assistants.
In a teleconference call with reporters on Wednesday, January 4, Senior Executive Director of the Office of Healthcare Professionals Recruitment, Suzzanne Ley indicated that the Kenyans are expected to move to Nova Scotia starting in June 2023.
This follows a successful recruitment trip by the Canadian province to Kenya where the recruiters interacted with the refugees and talked to them about working in Canada.
While the offers are conditional, Ley indicated that she expects all the candidates to accept the offer and move to work in the country.
The nurses were recruited from the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya, as well as a refugee camp in Nairobi where the recruiters visited.
“Some of the value in doing missions like this is to actually see and experience what it’s like on the ground," Ley told reporters.
According to the Senior Executive Director, the Kenyan nurses will be paid just like any other new continuing care assistant working in the province or the sector as a whole.
This means that the Kenyan refugee nurses are likely to earn an equivalent of Ksh6 million ($48,419) annually once they start their work in Nova Scotia.
This is after a review of wages for both unionized and non-unionized continuing care assistants working in the province that was conducted in February 2022.
According to Ley, issues such as housing for the Kenyan nurses and exactly where they will work are still being worked on ahead of their arrival.
The 65 were recruited through the federal Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, which identifies refugees with skills that meet regional and provincial immigration requirements.
Nova Scotia has already supported 42 applicants through the pilot, including more than 20 people now working in the continuing care system.
