Zimbabwe doctors strike over pay

Zimbabwe doctors strike over pay

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By Staff Reporter

JUNIOR and middle-level state doctors in Zimbabwe have gone on strike to press demands for higher pay, disrupting operations in the capital Harare's major health centres, state radio reported on Wednesday.

It said the doctors were also protesting over authorities' failure to provide hospitals with fuel allocations. Petrol has been in critically short supply over the past few months, resulting in thousands of vehicles being grounded nationwide.

"The doctors are also protesting over the failure by the government to allocate car loans and housing stands," the radio said. Health officials and the doctors' representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Zimbabwe's health workers have staged a series of strikes over the past few years to press for hikes in wages they say have failed to keep up with rising living costs as the country suffers an economic crisis widely blamed on President Robert Mugabe's government.

The government has in the past been forced to deploy army medical staff to help out at state hospitals hit by regular health workers' job boycotts.
Most of the institutions are also perpetually understaffed as most doctors and nurses move to neighbouring countries and further abroad in search of greener pastures soon after graduation.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects charges he has misruled Zimbabwe, and blames its economic woes largely on sabotage by his opponents in retaliation for controversial land reforms that has seen white-owned farmland forcibly redistributed among blacks - Reuters
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