NURSES who went on strike protesting poor salaries have been summoned to disciplinary hearings, but labour unions say this is an attempt to cow them into silence.
Confirming the hearings, Health Service Board (HSB)
chairperson Paulinus Sikhosana said: “That investigation is being done
institutionally and we are not doing it at the board. These disciplinary
actions are confidential. There are disciplinary principles in place and when
something happens, they refer to the procedures that are there.”
Health workers, mainly doctors and nurses, last month
withdrew their services across the country over poor remuneration.
In 2018, Vice-President and Health minister Constantino
Chiwenga fired thousands of nurses who went on strike to demand higher
salaries, in a hardline response by the country’s leadership to growing labour
unrest.
Yesterday, Zimbabwe Professional Nurses Association
president Robert Chiduku said the disciplinary hearings were an attempt to
intimidate health workers.
“This is a tactic to instil fear in anticipation of the
looming and pending industrial action that is meant to take place on July 22,
2022 and maybe prevent another action from taking place,” Chiduku said.
Zimbabwe Nurses Association president Enock Dongo added:
“We cannot have a government that victimises people every time they ask for
better salaries. We have a President (Emmerson Mnngagwa) who says he is a
listening President and when the people he appoints behave like this, then it
is not good.
“Nurses were demonstrating at the hospitals because they
were incapacitated, they were never on strike.” Newsday
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