Zimonline
By Nokuthula Sibanda
Wednesday 25 February 2009
HARARE – Zimbabwean doctors who have been on an indefinite strike to press for more pay and better working conditions have resolved to go back to work apparently after the new government promised to address their grievances, a top union official said.
“We are now going back to work strictly on humanitarian grounds,” said Amon Serevegi Hospital Doctors Association president.
“The government has not promised us much, but we have made an undertaking that we will go back to work.”
Serevegi could not be drawn into disclosing what sort of concessions they had been given by the government.
The strike by mostly junior doctors last year led to a virtual collapse of the country’s health delivery system.
The doctor’s strike was later joined in by nurses, making the situation in state hospitals – the source of health services for the majority of Zimbabweans –virtually untenable.
Standards and service at the public health institutions that were once lauded as some of the best public hospitals in Africa have over the past decade collapsed after years of under-funding and mismanagement.
The announcement by the doctors came hours after teachers, who were also striking for more pay, announced that they were returning to work following meetings with Education Minister David Coltart.
Coltart met leaders of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) and the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) last week to plead with the two unions that represent the country’s teachers to call off the strike has been going on since last year and had grounded the school system.
Meanwhile, PTUZ president Takawira Zhou said on Tuesday although they had agreed that teachers are going back to work, government should make an undertaking that teachers’ children do not pay fees.
“Although we have agreed to go back to work, government must make sure that children for teachers do not pay fees,” Zhou said.
“Government must also make sure that none of the teachers who were not reporting for work are victimised since they were not at work as a result of an economic crisis as they did not have bus fares while the other reason is that most of them were victims of political violence especially in the rural areas.”