WOES continue to mount for the under-fire Health Service
Board (HSB), with legislators demanding that the government must disband
it,while senior doctors say it has failed in its mandate.
This comes as health workers downed tools insisting that
the government must pay their salaries in United States dollars.
The Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA) said the HSB
was failing them as they were getting huge perks while workers were starving.
“The HSB commissioners are now the government’s slave
drivers who are paid to make the healthcare workers toil for peanuts and to
stifle them when they demand fair wages. They get huge perks, including several
thousand litres of fuel and expensive cars so that they can oppress.
“Every healthcare worker must get a fair wage. The
government needs to take the healthcare of the nation seriously and pay
properly for workers to afford to come to work. These workers cannot afford it
anymore. Their earnings have been wiped out by inflation,” SHDA said on its
official Twitter account.
The sentiments by senior doctors buttressed the
legislators’ demand for the disbandment of the HSB.
“There is a general feeling among citizens and health
workers that your board has become one of those commissions and boards that are
not adding any value to services required in this country,” MDC MP for Binga
North Prince Sibanda told the parliamentary portfolio on Health last week.
“You indicated that you are powerless and you have become
like a sponge which is used to deflect whatever aspirations the sector has. I
don’t think the existence of your board is still necessary under the
circumstances you have indicated.”
MDC MP for Emakhandeni/Entumbane Dingilizwe Tshuma said HSB
had failed to find a lasting solution to the current crisis.
“It seems that you are failing to find a lasting solution
to the current health crisis. You need to have a lasting solution to the health
sector on remuneration challenges,” he said.
HSB chairperson Paulinus Sikhosana told the Daily News on
Sunday that the legislators have an oversight role and their role was not to
appoint the board.
“They have an oversight role and they are not supposed to
appoint or dissolve the board,” Sikhosana said.
This comes as there
are allegations that the HSB spent money buying top-of-the-range vehicles for
commissioners while health workers are suffering.
On Tuesday, the Health Apex Council met with the government
in the Bipartite Negotiating Panel where the government indicated that there
would be no salary increase for the health workers for the next three months,
given that they were offered a 50 percent increase and US$75 coronavirus
(Covid-19) allowance valid for the next three months. Daily News
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