Zimbabwe Govt fires all nurses on strike

The Zimbabwe Government has sacked all nurses who took part in the nationwide strike.

A statement from Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said the move to discharge the nurses was in the interest of suffering patients.

“Government has instructed the Health Services Board to speedily engage all unemployed but trained nurses in the country. It has also authorized the Board to recall retired nurses,” the VP said on Tuesday.

Nurses in Zimbabwe had only begun the strike on Monday to press the government to pay them allowances and to protest a flawed system for grading salaries.

The strike left public hospitals understaffed and follows a month-long walkout by junior doctors that ended on April 2.

It posed a problem for President Emmerson Mnangagwa who wants to revive a sluggish economy ahead of elections set for July in which he faces a revitalized opposition Movement for Democratic Change party led by 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa.

The Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZNA), which has more than 16,000 members, said government negotiators had on Sunday tried to avert the strike by promising to pay arrears but nurses resolved to go on strike.

“They have been making promises for a long time and the nurses resolved to only go back to work when their money is in their accounts,” Enoch Dongo, the ZNA secretary general said.

At Harare Hospital, the second biggest in the country, there were few nurses on duty and non-critical patients were turned away, a Reuters witness said.

Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo closed its outpatient department and only tended to emergency cases, according to an official memo to staff. 

Its maternity wards were the most affected, a doctor at the hospital said.

The lowest paid nurse in Zimbabwe earns a gross monthly salary of $284 (Ksh.28,569) before allowances, according to Dongo.

The nurses want to be paid other allowances they say were promised by the government in 2010 but never honored. 

A majority of nurses were placed in lower grades making it harder for them to receive higher pay, he said.