Zimbabwe doctors in freash strike over pay

Zimbabwe doctors in freash strike over pay

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By Staff Reporter

DOCTORS at four of Zimbabwe's largest state hospitals began striking on Tuesday to demand higher pay, their spokesperson said.

"It's the same old story. We are asking for a salary review as government doctors are surviving on less than one United States dollar a week," Hospital Doctors' Association president Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa told AFP.

"In simple terms we are living in absolute poverty. We have not even bothered putting forward a proposal of how much we would need because it's there for all to see that our salaries are low and a review is overdue."

The majority of 350 doctors employed at the Parirenyatwa and Harare Central hospitals in the capital and the United Bulawayo Hospital and Mpilo Hospital in the country's second largest city Bulawayo have launched an indefinite strike, Nyamutukwa said.

The labour action comes hardly two months after state medics ended another work stoppage, leaving some hospital wards without doctors and others with only skeletal staff.

Junior and middle-level doctors at Zimbabwe's main state hospitals last went on strike in mid-December demanding their salaries be raised from Z$56 000 ($224, R1 560) to Z$5m ($20 000, R139 000).

The government at the time resorted to deploying army medics to augment staff at state hospitals. The strike was called off in March following a pay deal between the government and the striking doctors.

Strikes by doctors and nurses have in the past sometimes lasted several months.

The government could not immediately be reached for comment. - AFP
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