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Zim: Doctors strike, inflation soars
JOHANNESBURG/HARARE – Doctors at two major Harare hospitals have gone on strike to press for higher wages, it emerged Thursday, as Zimbabwe’s rate of annual inflation raced to 3,713 per cent.
The doctors, who are employed at Harare Central and Parirenyatwa Hospitals, only went back to work in early March following a strike begun in late December.
Once again, they are pressing for higher pay and better working conditions, a representative said.
“As we speak, some doctors have downed tools already,” Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa, the president of the Hospital Doctors' Association told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.
Doctors had been expected to go on strike on June 1, and the association has not yet informed health ministry officials of the industrial action, said Nyamutukwa.
Junior doctors are reported to be earning a basic salary minus allowances of just 252,000 Zimbabwe dollars per month - less than one US dollar a day at black market rates.
The spokesman said that come June, the strike action was likely to be widely followed. “What we're looking for is a reasonable figure in line with the cost of living,” he said.
He said doctors would be shooting themselves in the foot if they were to demand a specific figure in Zimbabwe’s hyper-inflationary environment.
The cost of living is spiralling upwards on a daily basis in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe, where the annual rate of inflation was revealed Thursday to have reached a new national record of 3,713.9 per cent in April.
The CSO, which has been accused of understating inflation data, said sharply rising prices for household power, transport fares, meat and vegetables had all contributed to the more-than-1,500-percent jump in the inflation rate.
Professionals employed by the government are among the worst affected. Earlier this month Health Minister David Parirenyatwa admitted nurses could not afford the transport fares to get to work.
During their last strike, doctors were at one point joined by nurses, plunging major hospitals in Harare and the second city of Bulawayo into chaos.
The authorities had to bring in the army to help run city hospitals. So starved of local staff are rural clinics that 136 Cuban doctors have had to be brought in to help run them. –Sapa-dpa
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