Doctors to engage Cabinet over illegal contracts and health services board utterances

After a week of nationwide consultations with its members, the ZHDA members unanimously rejected the ill advised and poorly drafted contract for junior doctors proposed by the Health Services Board.

The ZHDA membership noted that the contracts were drafted without any formal consultations with the ZHDA which sits in the Health Services Bipartite Negotiating Forum in which all health workers and government team of negotiators sit on a monthly basis to discuss contractual issues.

The ZHDA members countrywide described the Health Services Board as a board that has now totally become irrelevant, defunct, directionless, vindictive and infested by a bloated secretariat that does not only serve their selfish and petty minded interests which are clearly outside the pursuance of the national interest but also the prevailing policy frameworks such as ZIMASSET.

The recent move is a vindication to the long published position by the ZHDA that there indeed are some individuals in the Health Services Board who are whole heartedly working to discredit government, its leadership and always create a collision between doctors and their employer.  

This position is further evidenced by the utterances made by the Health Services Board through their public relations officer Mr. Maravanyika who pathetically and incorrectly described junior doctors on houseman ship as "medical students who were enjoying the benevolence of working without contracts".

This statement by Mr. Maravanyika has been received by the ZHDA membership as a direct provocation, reckless and indecorous behavior never expected by a government employee who should be knowledgeable that junior doctors have graduated from various universities, deliver hundreds of babies daily, certify the deceased as government doctors and constitute 95% of doctors working in our government hospitals.

We shudder to think which master Mr Maravanyika is serving when he wrongly informs the whole world that 95 % of doctors working in Zimbabwean government hospitals are medical students.

We urge the whole country to pray for Mr. Maravanyika that sanity prevails in his frame of logic and he immediately desists from making statements that further infuriates our erstwhile health workers who are still in cloud nine after they found each other with government in the recently adjusted on call allowances and re introduction of the medical allowance.

We pray he finds grace and basic wisdom to avoid monumental errors detrimental to the health of more than twelve million Zimbabweans being served by our junior doctors.

The ZHDA has now since written to the Chief Secretary to the Office of the President and Cabinet, the Minister of Health, the Health Services Board Chairperson, the Minister now responsible for Public Service, the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe and the Parliamentary portfolio committee on health notifying them of the constitutional flaws and irregularities in the proposed contract and doctors unanimous rejection of the contract.

The ZHDA also advised government to immediately investigate and dissolve the Health Services Board as it has become a breeding ground for quarrels with doctors, nurses and other health workers on seemingly trivial agendas which must never divert government from consolidating the benefits of our economic turnaround programme ZIMASSET, and the recently much accepted weeding out of corruption and ineffective individuals from government spearheaded by his Excellency of the republic.

ZHDA PRESIDENT (On behalf of our hardworking doctors)
DR F N NYAMANDE (0782414611)