Harare | Tuesday
AS hundreds of white farmers are driven off their properties in Zimbabwe, patients in state hospitals are dying as a result of a doctors strike.
The death toll directly attributable to the strike, which begun on July 24, had shot up to at least 60 at just one of the country’s main hospitals, Harare Central, by last week, according to the state-run daily The Herald.
Authorities at the hospital were not immediately available to comment on Monday, which was a public holiday in Zimbabwe.
A union leader said the strike was likely to continue at least for the next two weeks pending the outcome of a meeting called by government on August 25.
“It’s still on,” said Sibert Mandega of the Hospital Doctors Association.
“There is going to be a meeting on August 25 with the health ministry,” he said.
The paper said the morgue at the hospital had overstretched its capacity and was holding more than double its limit of bodies.
The country’s main umbrella trade union, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, expressed concern at the situation in hospitals and called on government to ensure the crisis was resolved expeditiously.
“It looks like we don’t value life. We implore government to ensure that the Public Services Commission (government’s human resources department) resolves this matter expeditiously,” said ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibebe.
The doctors are seeking a review of their salaries and conditions.
At Parirenyatwa Hospital the gates were locked.
“Nursing is a profession. It’s about caring for people. The moment you stop caring you stop being a nurse.” Stella Zengwa, the president of the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association (Zina), said there was no need for the nurses to continue with the strike since Zina had been mandated by the Public Service Commission (PSC), their employer, to restructure salaries.
Zengwa said: “The situation is still the same despite having been given a mandate to regrade their salaries. After I urged them to go back to work, they came up with new demands. They want an entry point salary of $50 000. That is ridiculous.
“Our employer is not willing to negotiate with us as long as they are on strike. I have been told that there will not be any negotiations whatsoever until the striking nurses have gone back to work.”
“What the nurses are doing is not right,” said Zengwa.
“Nursing is a profession. It’s about caring for people. The moment you stop caring you stop being a nurse, that is the message that I have been telling them all along. I believe they are being advised and misled by some people who have their own agendas.”
Ray Ndhlukula, the PSC’s secretary, has directed the Salary Service Bureau not to pay the striking nurses for the days they have not been at work.
A nurse who declined to be named said they were earning a gross salary of up to $18 000.
In Bulawayo, senior doctors have returned to work, but junior and middle-level doctors and nurses have vowed to continue with the strike until their grievances are resolved.
The president of the Hospital Doctors’ Association in Bulawayo, Elias Phiri, said it is unfortunate that patients must continue to suffer, but the government had to understand the doctors’ problems.
Junior doctors earn a gross salary of $35 000 a month and allowances of up to $70 000, but the government has not been paying these allowances, hence the strike.
The situation at Mpilo and United Bulawayo hospitals remained critical at the weekend as the senior doctors failed to cope with the number of patients. Some of the patients were turned away due to the continued strike.
Meanwhile, in the prime commercial farming region, farmers have abandoned about 80 properties as marauding bands continued looting.
Around 31 farms have been ransacked, with household goods being looted and livestock being driven away by gangs rampaging from farm to farm in the Doma area surrounding the northern town of Chinhoyi, Jenni Williams, representative for the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), said on Monday.
She said around 300 people had been driven from between 70 and 80 of the 100 farms in the Doma area since last Thursday.
State radio confirmed rampant looting Monday in Doma. “Farmhouses were literally cleaned (out),” it said.
The troubles began last week when white farmers clashed with blacks occupying land on a farm near Chinhoyi, 100 kilometres northeast of Harare, in Mashonaland West province. – AFP, The Daily News