Zimbabwe’s Health Minister David Parirenyatwa has ordered junior doctors — who have been on strike for the past two weeks to press for a huge salary increase — to go back to work, it was reported on Friday.
Doctors, like many other professionals, are feeling the pinch of Zimbabwe’s fast-devaluing local dollar. The doctors earn just Z$56 000 a month, which is worth $224 United States dollars at the official exchange rate, but just $22,40 dollars at the widely used parallel rate.
They want a new salary of nearly one hundred times that amount: Z$5-million, plus other improved perks.
Parirenyatwa on Thursday promised the government would discuss the doctors’ concerns and said he expected the health workers to go back to work on Friday, the official Herald newspaper reported.
”Currently we are in discussions with the relevant ministries as we seek to improve their conditions of service,” the minister was quoted as saying.
Patients at Harare’s main hospitals have complained they are being turned away because there is no-one to treat them, according to state radio.
The authorities are fighting a losing battle to maintain Zimbabwe’s once-model public health system. The deepening economic crisis has seen the exodus of hundreds of skilled health workers, many of them leaving for countries in Southern Africa and England where they can command better salaries.
Many rural health institutions now depend on more than 100 doctors sent by ally Cuba.
Junior doctors last went on strike in July to protest poor salaries and forced deployment to district hospitals. — Sapa-dpa