By Paul Nyathi|The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association actually authorised their Secretary-General Dr P Mugoni to speak at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s youth interface rally in Gweru a source has revealed to ZimEye.com.
The source from within the doctors Association told ZimEye.com in confidence on Friday that the Association leadership was invited to the rally after it had written an official letter to Mnangagwa thanking the President for attending to their grievances.
“Its unfortunate that our collegue collapsed to the pressure at the rally and made the public drama but the Association was indeed aware of the invitation to speak at the rally,” said the source.
According to him the Association actually wrote a letter to Mnangagwa two days before the rally thanking him for attending to their grievances and asking for a meeting with the President resulting in the invitation to speak at the rally.
The letter to Mnangagwa dated the 31st of May 2018 provided to ZimEye.com by the source reads as follows in full:
The President of Zimbabwe
His Excellency, Cde E.D Munangagwa
Dear Sir
RE: APPRECIATION FROM DOCTORS AND OUTSTANDING GRIEVANCES
The above subject matter refers.
The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) hereby commends the action you took to resolve the deadlock between doctors and the employer in March this year.
The assurance that procurement of drugs and equipment was ongoing, and the raise in our allowances have
gone a long way in improving health care delivery. Moreover, we have seen some hospitals receiving these drugs over the past two months, and we hope this continues until we reach regional standards.
We would like to bring to your attention some of the outstanding issues that we believe, through your executive powers, can be resolved. Some government representatives have avoided our calls for a
meeting for eight (8) weeks, and we feel your intervention will go a long way. Moreover, we have other issues that can only be addressed by you as the President.
The issues are as follows:
1. Vehicle loan scheme – government allocated $10million to doctors to purchase vehicles for easy travel to attend to emergencies. This money has not materialised since March, and our request
for a meeting over this has been ignored. We have requested that CMED be the guarantor, and ZHDA choose the beneficiaries for the first batch, and so on as this is a revolving fund.
2. Our members are hereby requesting to be allocated land for housing, farms and mining. We already have memorandums of understanding with certain property developers and we believe this non-cash incentive will retain our doctors and keep the morale high.
3. Doctors have also previously requested that we have regular meetings with the employer to
discuss pressing issues, but this has not been responded to. Furthermore, on-call allowances that
were agreed upon were only paid for a month, then cut by margins of $190 and above. This has caused unrest amongst our members, and we have since communicated this to the Health Services Board
4. ZHDA would like to embark on outreaches to rural and disadvantaged areas, in an effort to provide health care for all. We are a non-profit organization, and lack adequate funding and material to do so.
In a nutshell, we would like to do outreaches on weekends, and require transport, food,
stethoscopes, BP machines, basic drugs and stationery. A more detailed document will be availed to you, should Your Excellency approve.
We hope to continue working well with your office, and hope you will continue to extend your goodwill to our association and subsequently, the people of Zimbabwe.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
ZHDA NATIONAL EXECUTIVE