OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday 7.00pm.
THE seven-day srike by junior doctors in Zimbabwe prompted a meeting by the country’s health and finance ministers on Monday to decide whether to pay the strikers.
Hospital Doctors Association President Nyasha Masuka said that health minister, Timothy Stamps, acting finance minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and the head of the Public Services Commission, Mariyawanda Nzuwah were meeting to decide on their new pay and allowances.
A decision is set to be taken later on Monday.
Some 400 junior doctors running Zimbabwe’s government hospitals went on strike last week over pay and conditions, forcing the country’s hospitals to discharge and turn back ill patients.
Only emergency cases are being attended to while ther cases are being turned away from casualty wards which are manned by a few senior doctors.
Out-patient departments have been closed at Harare’s major hospitals.
The doctors say they are striking not only for better pay, but for an overhaul of the entire health service.
Strikers say they have been forced to watch patients die because of a lack of essential supplies, such as drips and blood for transfusions.
The junior doctors say that after standard deductions from their salaries they take home Z$6000 (about $160) a month.
Junior doctors trained in Zimbabwe are bound to work in government service for two years after graduating. — AFP