By Nomusa Garikai| The doctors strike is over, hurray!
In their statement announcing the end of the strike, the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) National Executive raised some interesting points and I have just picked a few to comment on.
1. Procurement of essential medicines and drugs is in motion and we expect an improvement soon, so as to offer quality health care to ALL patients.
I wish I could share the doctors’ optimism, I do not. The Zimbabwe economy has been in the doldrums for decades now and there is nothing that has happened to make me believe things are about to change.
President Mnangagwa and his Junta regime have made a big song and dance about “Zimbabwe is open for business!” to attract the much-needed foreign investors. Sadly, there has been no takers because investors continue to shy away from Zimbabwe because the still see it as a lawless nation ruled by thugs.
The regime’s failure to implement the democratic reforms and thus deliver free, fair and credible elections it has been promising since the November 2017 coup has only confirmed to all that the Zanu PF dictatorship is very much alive or be it under different management.
Zanu PF is rigging this year’s elections. Indeed, one can even say “the elections are done” as SADC leaders said a month before the 2013 rigged elections. No investors are going to do business in a country in which the next regime change is yet another coup or “military assisted transition”, as the coup plotters would put it.
With no meaningful prospects of meaningful economic recovery, it is naïve to expect hospitals to have drugs, basic equipment, etc. anytime soon. These things cost money and this is another regime promise, just like free and fair elections, that will never be honoured.
2. We have received an upward review of on call allowances, noting that members work round the clock for up to 360 continuous hours. This is a health specific allowance. Understanding the current limitations in the economy, we hope to continually review until we attain regional and international standards.
Well doctors will be lucky if their reviewed allowance will ever be paid, especially once the regime has rigged the elections when the usual political arrogance returns with vengeance. As for doctors earning becoming comparable to those in the region – dream on.
Zimbabwe’s economy will never improve until we deal with this cancer of bad governance, so graphically rubbed in by Zanu PF’s periodic blatant rigging of elections in the name of the party’s no-regime-change mantra.
3. With effect from today, until latest 02 April 2018, ZHDA members will report for duty. Normal work has resumed. Should the HSB fail to honour the agreement, we will have no choice but to express our grievances again. We would like to thank His Excellency, Cde. E. D Mnangagwa for his intervention and swift action.
His Excellency was a senior member of the Zanu PF regimes that has ruled this nation with an iron-fist these last 38 years. He has played his part in the total destruction of the Zimbabwe economy. Of all Mugabe’s cronies, President Mnangagwa was the tyrant’s right-hand man and played a leading role in all the looting, vote rigging and political murders that took place. Over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans were murdered by the regime to establish and retain the one-party dictatorship that still dominate and rule supreme to this day.
Like Pontius Pilate, President Mnangagwa, will never wash the innocent blood he has shed. Shine the light of justice on ED and he will glow like a scorpion under ultraviolet light!
This latest Doctor’s strike has lasted a whole month; he had time for the usual globe-trotting and plenty of cash to buy the Chiefs new twin cab trucks but did not have time and cash to pay doctors and or buy incubators for new born-babies!
“Swift action!” What swift action are you talking about? – zsdemocrats.blogspot.co.uk