NURSES have put government on notice to improve their salaries and conditions of service or face mass action, saying their earnings were no longer viable.
The nurses accused their employer of pushing them to the
“extremes” as their salaries have been wiped out by inflation, while no effort
is being made to improve their conditions of service.
In an emotional letter to the Health Services Commission
(HSC), nurses said they were having to watch helplessly while patients die in
under-equipped hospitals.
The letter, dated May 24 was addressed to the HSC acting
secretary-general Angelbert Mbengwa.
Zimbabwe Nurses Association president Enock Dongo said the
nurses had made several efforts to engage their employer to no avail.
“Firstly it is a matter of great regret that precedent is
seemingly showing that the plight of nurses is not an issue of concern to the
employer,” Dongo said.
“The Health Service Bipartite Negotiating Panel, which is
supposed to be the forum in which issues are discussed has been deliberately
made useless as it has not met in the past two years despite our persistent
request for it to sit and discuss issues.”
Dongo added: “As nurses, our morale is at its lowest ever.
We are working under extremely poor conditions that are not only unsafe to
patients but even unsafe to ourselves.
Even our capacity to withstand pain has been pushed to the extreme
because on a daily basis we see patients dying simply because basic medication
and equipment that could potentially save their lives are not in stock at our
hospitals.”
Contacted for comment, Mbengwa said he had not yet received
the letter. He said should the
commission receive the letter, it would “look into the issues raised”.
“The nurses know the protocol,” Mbengwa said.
“They have to go through the Health Service Bipartite
Forum, and then if we get the letter, we will look into the issues that were
raised in the letter.”
Nurses currently
earn US$200 in allowances and another U$100 in local currency.
In January, government amended the Health Services Act to
bar public healthcare workers from striking for more than 72 hours.
Health workers, who go on strike face disciplinary action,
while organisers of such strikes can face imprisonment of up to six months, or
both.
Government has in the past fired health workers for
striking.
But Dongo said such threats were not the solution.
“We, therefore, urge our employer to have a listening ear
and seriously consider our plight. To refuse to meet us is not the answer. To
simply say we will arrest you if you strike is not the answer. To withhold the
necessary letter of good standing so as to sabotage our efforts to seek
employment in other jurisdictions is not the answer. We, therefore, kindly, but
urgently request a meeting with yourselves and interested stakeholders within
the next 14 days so as to find solutions for the good of our health sector,” he
said.
Zimbabwe has recorded a mass exodus of health workers, with at least 4 000 said to have migrated to the United Kingdom in the past two years. Newsday
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