The government in Zimbabwe has ordered police to arrest all striking state hospital doctors for defying last week’s court order to return to work.
Mariyawanda Nzuwah, head of the government human resources agency, the Public Services Commission (PSC), said the doctors face contempt of court charges for ignoring a labour tribunal order that they should end their strike because it was illegal.
Quoted by the official ZIANA news agency, Nzuwah said the PSC ”has requested the commissioner of police to bring before the courts of law all those doctors who have violated the law and the attorney general to prosecute them forthwith.”
Doctors at government run hospitals, whose monthly salaries can barely pay for basics such as rent, bills and groceries, have been on strike for a month demanding pay hikes of up to 8 000%.
Nzuwah said the doctors’ demands were ”ridiculous and unacceptable” and that even President Robert Mugabe did not earn the kind of salary they have asked for.
A labour tribunal last Thursday ruled that the doctors’ strike, then two weeks old, was illegal, but the doctors vowed not to return to work until they had a written undertaking from government to deal with their demands.
Nzuwa said the doctors were in breach of labour laws that prohibit workers in essential services such as the medical field and the uniformed forces from striking.
He said the doctors had ”deliberately and intentionally violated the law and therefore committed a criminal offence”.
He added that the doctors were being contemptuous of parliament which promulgated the labour laws and President Mugabe who enacted them.
The labour court declared the doctors’ strike illegal because, it said, the doctors did not follow legal procedures of channelling their grievances when they embarked on the strike.
The court gave the government authority, as the doctors’ employer, to take disciplinary action against any doctor who defied the order.
Military doctors and consultant medical staff brought in from Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been attending to serious and emergency cases at hospitals affected by the strike.
Nurses who went on strike days after the doctors, have since returned to work after government promised to address their grievances. – Sapa-AFP