An MDC Alliance Member of Parliament has criticised the Ministry of Health and Child Care for firing doctors while ignoring their legitimate concerns, thereby plunging the health sector into an unprecedented crisis.
Ruth Labode, who chairs the Health and Child Care Committee, was speaking at a 2020 post-budget parliamentary committee consultation meeting on Wednesday. She asked Health secretary Agnes Mahomva what measures the government will put in place to end the crisis. Said Labode:
The dismissal of doctors is a concern to me. How do you plan to go forward? How do you plan to replace them, are you going to Cuba? I do not know where you plan to go.
In her response, Mahomva said that the issue of doctors’ dismissal was no longer a prerogative of the health ministry alone since the Labour Court had ruled that the doctors’ strike was illegal.
The government recently fired nearly 300 doctors for absenteeism after they embarked on an indefinite strike, throwing the public health delivery system into total disarray.