'As we move forward, let's transform our work ethics' argue Chiwenga - until end vote rigging culture, going nowhere

"As we move forward and face the future with courage, the expectation of government is that the work ethics and work culture within the Ministry of Health and Child Care undergo deep transformation," said VP Chiwenga.

"We expect all grievances to be solved amicably through discussions without endangering patients' lives; never again shall patients' lives be used like pawns in a game of chess."

"Kusaziva kufa zvokwadi!" (Ignorance is a curse worse than death!)

VP Chiwenga if anyone is playing Russian roulette with the lives of the people of Zimbabwe then that person is you, Chiwenga, and not the nurses and doctors.

How many times have these nurses and doctors said the wage they are being paid is not enough to cover their transport cost to work and back home, buy food and pay for their accommodation? A quick calculation shows that their monthly wage does not even cover their transport cost let alone everything else.

As much as these health workers care about the welfare of the patients they cannot be expected to walk for hours to work on an empty stomach, do a full day's work on an empty stomach. Walk back home on an empty stomach and go to bed on an empty stomach. Get up the following day and do the same again!

There are reports that government has just awarded the nurses and doctors a wage increase. Let us assume that the increase will pay for all their basic needs. With the annual inflation rate running at 800% and monthly rate at 35%; whatever wage increase government offered it must be increased by 35% end of every month!

Did you, VP Chiwenga, agree to the automatic monthly wage increase to cover for inflation? If you did not then the reality is the health care workers will be 35% worse off financially next month than he/she is this month. The US$ is a more stable currency than the Z$ and hence the reason the nurses and doctors have said they should be paid in US$ and not Z$.

It is not the health care workers who are responsible for Zimbabwe's soaring cost of living and soaring inflation; this is government's responsibility. To deny the workers a living wage is to punish the workers for government's own failures.

How ironic that VP Chiwenga was addressing the press wearing the face mask and face shield and odd occasion he has visited an hospital or clinic he was wearing the full "space suit" PPE. And yet the nurses and doctors, the frontline workers working with the corona virus patients, do not even have the most basic PPE!

Workers is government offices and Zanu PF offices have been tested for corona virus and yet many of the health care workers up and done the country have not been tested.

Zimbabwe's confirmed corona virus cases and deaths are very low but only because the country has not been testing as aggressively as it should. Zimbabwe has only done 20% of the covid-19 tests per capita of what SA has done. So of everyone covid-19 positive patient put into isolation four were left undetected and have been spreading the virus.

Zimbabwe's economic is in total meltdown because of 40 years of the criminal waste of the country's material and human resources through gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness by this Zanu PF dictatorship. The party's blundering incompetence in the handling of the corona virus pandemic is going to cost the nation hundreds of thousands of lives!

The nation has been stuck with this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu Pf dictatorship for 40 years and counting because the party rigged elections.
 
"The expectation of government is that the work ethics and work culture within the Ministry of Health and Child Care undergo deep transformation!" What the nation is dying for, literals and figuratively, is a deep transformation of the country's rotten political system to end Zanu PF's vote rigging culture!