HARARE – The Labour Court ruled on Friday that the ongoing strike by doctors was legal.
The Court threw out an application in which the Health Services board (HSB) sought to have the strike deemed illegal.
In its application, the HSB condemned the doctors’ industrial action arguing that they are not
supposed to strike as their services are essential.
However, the Labour Court dismissed the application on a technicality.In its judgment whereby the Zimbabwe Hospitals Doctors Association (ZHDA) is cited as the
respondent, the court ruled that HSB’s application was prematurely handled.
“The matter having been prematurely set down before the papers were regularised, it be and is hereby struck off,” Justice Euna Makamure ruled.

According to ZHDA’s lawyer Munyaradzi Gwisai, HSB filed the application at the Labour Court but
did not serve it to the doctors’ legal practitioners as is required.
“We did not know about the application filed by the HSB till yesterday (last Friday) when we went
before the judge. The board was supposed to serve its application to us but it did not,” Gwisai told the Daily News.
Gwisai advised that government should instead come to terms with their employees’ demands for progress’ sake.
“I think the HSB should just come to terms with our client’s concerns so as to move forward. It’s not true that they are not entitled to strikes as
Section 55 of the Zimbabwean Constitution gives them the right to do so,” Gwisai said.
The striking doctors are protesting the severe shortages of pharmaceutical drugs at public
hospitals, the selling of available drugs in foreign currency by retail pharmacies, the poor state of
the country’s hospital infrastructure and their “falling” salaries which they now want the government to pay in foreign currency.Daily News