Chronicle Editor
It can be said that the strike by junior doctors is over.
They started the industrial action on September 3 demanding US$-indexed salaries and better working conditions. Operating under their representative body, Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’ Association (ZHDA), the 500 or so professionals rejected a number of salary reviews from their employer, the Health Service Board (HSB).
The Government and the general public appealed to them to return to work but the appeals fell on deaf ears. The HSB approached the court which declared the doctors’ strike illegal, but the medical practitioners stuck to their guns. Fed up with the employees’ recalcitrance and disdain for the law, the HSB initiated a process of calling them for disciplinary hearings charging them with embarking on an illegal strike. By November 26, the HSB had fired 448 of them.
As the impasse dragged on, the Roman Catholic Church got involved by appealing to the President to recall the fired doctors on guarantees that they would not be made to reapply to re-join public service. He agreed and gave them 48 hours to return to work, but a majority of them again spurned the offer.
Just around that time, the Higherlife Foundation (HLF), an organisation formed by Econet founder, Mr Strive Masiyiwa announced a $100 million training fellowship under which junior and senior doctors employed at public health facilities could apply while being paid up to $10 000 each. One of the conditions for enrolment was that the doctors should be back at work. This initiative, in our view, helped in a significant way to get the workers back to work as by December 5, 365 of them had applied.
Reports from major public hospitals such as Parirenyatwa and Harare in Harare, Chitungwiza Central in Chitungwiza as well as United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo in Bulawayo indicate that the staffing levels are back to normal.
The HLF has done a good thing for the country. We applaud them for that as we do a newly formed representative body for doctors, the Zimbabwe Progressive Doctors’ Association (PDAZ) for breaking the destructive hold that the ZHDA exercised on practitioners during the strike. It was apparent to us that the ZHDA had become too confrontational and politicised.
Zimbabweans, a majority of whom rely on the public health sector for their medical needs should be supportive of the formation of the new, progressive union for medical doctors. They, as we also do, look forward to greater stability in the health service sector with disputes being discussed in a sober, professional manner while upholding, most fundamentally, the welfare of patients.
In saying this, we are not suggesting that doctors must work for free. No. We appreciate that they did not read one of the world’s most demanding courses to work for nothing. They deserve high salaries and better working conditions that are commensurate with the criticality of the service they deliver to the nation.
However, there is always a better way through which both interests can be balanced before workers in this essential service resort to strikes that cause unnecessary suffering and deaths that could have been avoided.
“We want to be progressive,” PDAZ spokesperson Dr Anesu Rangwani said, “but we are not going to label anyone who has not been coming to work because doctors did not down tools for no reason. However, as PDAZ we are saying the past should stay in the past. Yes, incapacitation was there, our grievances still stand and they are still genuine, but what we need now is a solution. We need to forge a way forward. We have commenced the process (of negotiating with Government) and we have since submitted our proposals in terms of what we expect as salaries and non-salary benefits. There is nothing solid yet, but we are hopeful that an agreement is imminent.”
We have no doubt that the HSB is aware of the plight of doctors and must continue to explore ways of improving their salaries and working conditions. We are however mindful of the fact that resources may be inadequate in a rebuilding economy such as ours. It is not a secret that the economy is facing difficulties. As such, resources may not be enough to go round to the satisfaction of all but we don’t doubt the HSB’s willingness to pay doctors higher salaries.
As already highlighted, the HLF has made an important contribution. We ask that they keep the intervention in place until the Government attains enough capacity to pay better salaries not for medical doctors only, but also other civil servants.
It would be more helpful if other private organisations emulate what the HLF has done. They can choose to come up with their own scholarship facilities for doctors. They can choose to augment doctors’ salaries. They can choose to buy drugs, equipment and consumables for use in public health facilities, in that way, addressing yet another grievance that doctors have raised in addition to that for higher salaries and better working conditions.
Online Reporter