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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter
GOVERNMENT will continue improving conditions of service for civil servants particularly health workers in an effort to minimise skills flight and ensure quality service delivery, an official has said.
Speaking at the close of a week-long end of year strategic planning meeting for the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Dr Jasper Chimedza, who is the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, said the health sector has been hard hit by brain drain as workers join the great trek to the so called greener pastures.
Hordes of health workers have in the past few years been leaving work in the country to join private practice in western countries, where many are subjected to menial jobs.
Dr Chimedza said Government is committed to improving conditions of work and retaining all its workers.
“We were having a strategic meeting to plan for the year 2023 and reflect on the year 2022. We were looking at the challenges that we faced in achieving the targets we set ourselves in 2021 and we saw that we achieved a lot.
“However areas identified were issue of funding, delays in release of funding by Treasury and skills flight.
We have had a lot of skills flight in the past three years because of a number of reasons and chief among them the Covid-19 pandemic which increased demand in the West where higher salaries were offered,” said Dr Chimedza.
He could not be drawn into revealing how many health workers have been lost so far but said the Government has been consistently and continuously trying to improve conditions of service for its workers.
The major cost drivers in terms of salary erosion for workers are accommodation and transport and so Government has been subsidising them, said Dr Chimedza.
“There was an increase in allowances and that has contributed significantly to improvement and also other incentives such as allowing civil servants to import vehicles duty free. We also expect to have secured one or two additional flats for health workers before the end of the year,” he said.
Dr Chimedza said another block of flats for health workers will be availed at Baines Clinic in the Avenues in Harare while renovation of the Mpilo Central Hospital doctors’ flat that was burnt down, has been completed.
“Government is really doing a lot in terms of trying to improve conditions of services. What we want is to improve retention of our critical staff, ” said Dr Chimedza.
He said Government has also invested in health workers’ canteens, tools of the trade and was grateful to its development partners for sustaining health services.
Various United Nations agencies, World Health Organisation, World Bank and other partners also attended the strategic planning meeting. — @ncubeleon.
Bongani Ndlovu