Disciplinary hearings for striking doctors will start
today, with the Health Services Board (HSB) set to pass default judgments on
doctors that abscond the process.
Doctors have been threatening not to attend the hearings
claiming that they did not have transport fares to travel.
The hearings follow revelations that Government would need
not less than $4 billion a month in salaries for the health sector only, if it
were to give in to the striking doctors’ demands.
HSB board chairman Dr Paulinus Sikosana told our Harare
Bureau yesterday that in the event doctors snub the hearings, the Labour Act
provided for default judgements.
“Yes, they have indicated that they will not turn up for
hearings, however the Labour Act provides for disciplinary hearings to proceed
even in absentia by those that are supposed to appear before the hearings,”
said Dr Sikosana.
He said the HSB had tried to negotiate with the striking
doctors on several occasions but to no avail as they adopted an
“uncompromising” stance.
Dr Sikosana said the sticking issue has been pegging their
on-call allowances to the interbank rate, a position Government has said was
unaffordable.
“The salary bill for the Ministry of Health (and Child
Care) is $430 million per month, if we were to use the minimalist interbank
rate of USD1:$10, that would translate to $4 billion per month. The Government
will go broke, they can’t afford it.
“So what is needed is a compromise stance,” said Dr
Sikosana. He said the situation has also been the same with senior
doctors.
Although our Harare Bureau could not immediately establish
the number of doctors who are set to undergo the disciplinary hearings, sources
said almost half of the country’s 1 600 public sector doctors have not been
reporting for duty, a majority of whom are from central and provincial
hospitals.
Dr Sikosana said Government approached the courts as a
“last option and in terms of the Labour Act”, which says that any employee who
decides not to report for work without authority for at least five days, should
be subjected to legal and disciplinary action “and that’s what we are
following”. Chronicle
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