Zimbabwe health workers strike after rejecting 100pc pay rise


FE Team | Published: June 20, 2022 19:55:35 | Updated: August 21, 2022 19:45:28


People walk past Zimbabwean medical workers as they sit outside Sally Mugabe Hospital during a strike by state doctors and nurses to press for higher pay, in Harare, Zimbabwe, June 20, 2022. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Zimbabwean health workers went on strike on Monday after rejecting a 100 per cent wage hike offer last week, pressing their demand for payment in US dollars as the local currency slumps.

Zimbabwe's main nurses' union urged the government to negotiate and warned that lives would be lost if the dispute was not resolved quickly, reports Reuters.

The government and health workers are at an impasse after inflation jumped to 131.7 per cent in May, a grim echo of the hyperinflation that wiped out people's savings a decade ago.

Government workers rejected the below-inflation 100 per cent wage hike offer on Friday.

At Sally Mugabe Hospital in Harare, patients seeking treatment sat in the courtyard while doctors, nurses, radiographers and pharmacists left their workplaces to protest.

"The salaries that the health workers received last week were pathetic," Enock Dongo, head of the Zimbabwe Nurses' Association, told Reuters, adding that the majority were paid 20,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($53) a month.

He said health professionals across the country had decided to strike until they were paid US$540 a month, the pay they used to receive in 2018 before the local currency slumped.

A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from longtime leader Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup, has struggled to end an economic crisis that started under his predecessor.

 

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