Harare - Striking hospital doctors in Zimbabwe vowed to stay
off the job until government acceded to their demands for better pay
conditions to help cushion them against the effects of 11.3 million
per cent inflation.
The nationwide strike began Wednesday over the doctors demands to
be paid in foreign currency instead of the nearly worthless Zimbabwe
dollar.
Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (HDA) chairman Amon Siveregi
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the doctors would continue the
industrial action until government came to the table.
'We notified them on Monday that our situation had forced us to
down tools but we are yet to get a response from them,' said
Siveregi.
Minister of Health David Parirenyatwa said the government was
unable to keep up with galloping inflation, which shot up from 2.2
million per cent in May to 11.3 million per cent in June, but is
thought to be really much higher.
'From time to time we review their salaries but at times we cannot
cope up with the ever escalating cost of living,' he said.
A visit to three government hospitals in Harare province -
Parirenyatwa, Harare Central and Chitungwiza showed that some
patients had not been attended to by doctors since Tuesday, thus
further paralyzing a health system that is on its knees.
The exodus of health personnel abroad, the ravages of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic and the failure by President Robert Mugabe's government to
import essential medical drugs and equipment have aggravated the
situation.
While refusing to say how much he was paid Siveregi assured: 'Our
demands are very reasonable. We just want to be paid a decent
salary.'
'I wish these doctors would just continue working while the
government look at their concerns,' said Theresa Marimwe, a woman
whose four-year-old daughter Grace to Chitungwiza hospital, is suff
from cholera and looked pale and exhausted.
'She has a running tummy. I wonder if she will get a
prescription,' Marimwe said with concern.
Zimbabwe's doctors, among the best trained in Africa but also
among the worst paid, earn a starting salary of 680 Zimbabwe dollars
a month - just enough to buy three loaves of bread.
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