TNAI gets MEA’s approval to place and safeguard Indian nurses abroad

TNAI will confirm sponsoring hospitals’ information through its network and ensure that hiring hospitals adhere to employee welfare standards.

False employment promises and exploitation are rampant in cases of Indian nurses being hired abroad. The government has decided to put an end to this ordeal. The Ministry of External Affairs has officially certified the 108-year-old organisation, The Trained Nurses Association of India (TNAI) as a recruitment agent to place Indian nurses abroad.

TNAI has more than 400,000 members in India and abroad. It is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of Indian nurses across the country and the world. It represents all categories of nurses, including students, practitioners, educators, researchers and administrators in both state-run and private institutions.

TNAI will confirm sponsoring hospitals’ information through its network, and ensure that hiring hospitals adhere to employee welfare standards.

The association plans to contact major hospitals across countries to obtain job vacancies.

Simultaneously, TNAI will reach out to Indian nurses through its in-house journal, job postings in newspapers, magazines and websites, and nursing colleges.

Nurses can also contact respective state branch offices of TNAI located across India.

“TNAI wanted to bring an end to the exploitation of nurses. To help nurses to get recruited for foreign services, TNAI will collect determined fee by Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India,” says Anita Deodhar, president, TNAI.

In compliance to the WP filed by TNAI in the Supreme Court of India and its subsequent order in 2014, the Government of India gave recommendations to all the state and UT governments to take steps to formulate legislation/guidelines to be adopted for implementation to bring improvement in the working conditions of nurses working in private hospitals/institutions.

“TNAI believes to advance professional, educational, economic and general welfare of nurses. The organisation took this initiative after it received many complaints of exploitation from authorised/unauthorised recruiting agents,” says Evelyn P Kannan, secretary general, TNAI.

TNAI has many firsts to its credit. The association, which was known as Association of Nursing Superintendents earlier, was instrumental in establishing a formal education system for nursing in the 1920s.