Zimbabwean doctors are threatening to down tools. They don’t want money but fuel. “We have spent many days and nights in petrol queues. Yet we have to respond to emergencies. People can die while we are in petrol queues. There are a lot of critical cases on a daily basis that require urgent attention,” Dr Takavafira Chinyoka, president of the Junior Doctors Association told the Mail & Guardian on Thursday, shortly before going into a meeting to finalise their strike plans. “The government has to talk to service stations. We need to get special cards.”
About 300 junior doctors countrywide face this predicament. They are classified as special services but complain that they are not getting the preferential treatment their jobs demand. They forwarded their concerns to the government a month ago but have yet to receive a response.
The Minister of Energy and Power Development, retired lieutenant general Mike Nyambuya, has acknowledged that the fuel crisis was an “emergency” and that the government has engaged the various security arms to “manage the allocation of fuel”.
“Where we can walk, by all means let’s walk, where we can cycle, by all means let’s do so,” he said this week.
The price of fuel was hiked by 300% on Monday on the back of rising world oil prices. Zimbabwe is battling to generate foreign currency to pay for supplies. Bus fares and food commodity prices are expected to increase, adding further inflationary pressure on the ailing economy.
The doctor’s strike threat comes at a time when the United Nations has dispatched special envoy Anna Tibai-juka to the country to get a first-hand account of the recent destruction of informal settlements.
The state-controlled newspaper, The Herald, quoted President Robert Mugabe as saying, “I have agreed to receive the United Nations Secretary General’s special envoy in the country, so as to enable them to understand and appreciate what we are trying to do for our people, who deserve much better than the shacks that are now being romanticised as fitting habitats for them.”
Tibaijuka met Mugabe on Wednesday and described their talks as “very good”. She will be visiting several sites over the next few days and interact with communities affected by the clampdown. Talks with NGOs and other Zimbabwean civic groups, and a government ministerial task force are also on the cards.
In a joint statement released this week, 10 UN experts condemned the evictions and described the failure of African leaders to intervene as “distressing”. Amnesty International claimed: “The people of Zimbabwe are being sold out — in the interests of a false ‘African solidarity’.”
Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing with the UN Commission on Human Rights, said they had received reports of six suicides following the demolition of settlements. “Two of the suicides took place in rural areas, we are told, out of desperation: they did not have land and no food. We have also received information on the adverse situation in the villages, where there are no adequate medical services available. We have received lots of reports of women who were forced to give birth exposed to the winter conditions.”
He lambasted the government’s resettlement plans. “Why was this situation created? People have sought refuge in the urban centres since independence, as the government has failed to deliver on its social policies on housing, health and employment … the actions are not rational.”
The Herald reported that the government had announced housing plans that would allow about 20 500 people to settle in Harare.