Dozens of doctors at four of Zimbabwe’s largest state hospitals began striking on Tuesday to demand higher pay, their spokesperson said.
”It’s the same old story. We are asking for a salary review as government doctors are surviving on less than one United States dollar a week,” Hospital Doctors’ Association president Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa said.
”In simple terms we are living in absolute poverty. We have not even bothered putting forward a proposal of how much we would need because it’s there for all to see that our salaries are low and a review is overdue.”
The majority of 350 doctors employed at the Parirenyatwa and Harare Central hospitals in the capital and the United Bulawayo Hospital and Mpilo Hospital in the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo, have launched an indefinite strike, Nyamutukwa said.
The labour action comes hardly two months after state medics ended another work stoppage, leaving some hospital wards without doctors and others with only skeletal staff.
Junior and middle-level doctors at Zimbabwe’s main state hospitals last went on strike in mid-December demanding their salaries be raised from Z$56 000 ($224) to Z$5-million.
The government at the time resorted to deploying army medics to augment staff at state hospitals. The strike was called off in March following a pay deal between the government and the striking doctors.
Strikes by doctors and nurses have in the past sometimes lasted several months.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis with world-record inflation at 2 200%, chronic shortages of foodstuffs such as sugar and cooking oil, and at least 80% of the population living below the poverty threshold.
Deputy Health Minister Edwin Muguti said the government was working on means to address the doctors’ concerns but would not give details.
”We are aware of their grievances and as government we are doing the best we can to address them within the limits of the economic situation,” Muguti said.
”Some of the grievances are legitimate but they can’t all be solved at the same time.” — AFP
