No end in sight to doctors’ strike

Junior doctors in Zimbabwe’s public health services remained on strike this week for the fifth week running with no end in sight to a showdown with the government over salaries. The doctors, some of whom earn salaries as low as the US $200 a month, went on strike on 21 September saying they needed increases, better equipment, more drugs and medicines, and better working hours. Rights groups and government officials told IRIN they were concerned that the situation at major government hospitals and rural clinics was becoming desperate, with only emergency cases being handled. Trainos Matayaya, vice president of the Hospital Doctors Association, said in a statement this week that in some cases the bank accounts of doctors on strike had been frozen, and that their salaries had not been paid since they strike started. A government spokesman told IRIN that while only the bank accounts of criminals could be frozen, salaries would not be paid until they went back to work. “President Robert Mugabe personally views this as a very important issue - that their salaries are linked to critical skills - and the government has agreed a review of their salaries and conditions,” said presidential spokesman George Charamba. He told IRIN the government, however, had “raised a disallowance against doctors on strike”. A spokesman for Zimrights, one of the country’s major donor-funded human and civil rights groups said: “It is absolutely critical that this strike is resolved as soon as possible, so that the public has access to normal medical services.”