About 200 nurses and 100 healthcare professionals will be employed to work in the Government’s health services over the next few weeks, The Sunday Times has learnt.

This is one of the largest bulk employments in the health services, which have long been suffering due to a lack of staff.

The decision to employ the nurses and other professionals, including paramedics, was given the seal of approval by the Finance Ministry yesterday morning, sources said.

A higher than usual number of nurses is being taken on since the group includes graduates of two consecutive student intakes.

Three years ago the length of the nursing course was reduced from four to three years.

Sources said 100 of the new nurses have already been working with the Government as “casuals”. They will now be fully employed.

The rest of new recruits will start work over the next few weeks and will be deployed where needed.

Over the past years, nurses have been complaining about staff shortages at Mater Dei Hospital and other government services such as health centres.

Last winter, nurses worked overtime to make up for the lack of staff at Mater Dei, which experienced overcrowding when many patients were admitted following the severe fall in temperature. Back then the health authorities said about 200 new nurses would soon be employed.

Recently, the Labour Party complained that freshly graduated paramedics – including physiotherapists, speech therapists, radiographers and podologists – remained unemployed despite the shortage.

PL health spokeswoman Marie Louise Coleiro Preca had said that in March the paramedics were called in for job interviews before they completed their course.

The PL had objected to this as it argued that the students should be employed depending on the outcome of their final exams and not based on one interview.

Since then the students had completed their exams and graduated, yet the vacancies were not filled, she said.

Health Minister Joe Cassar had said that if the interviews had taken place after the students graduated, the recruitment would have been delayed by about three months. Carrying out the interviews earlier saved time, he said.