By John Ikani
Health workers in Zimbabwe have embarked on strike after rejecting a 100% wage hike offer on Friday.
The industrial action embarked on Monday is aimed at pressing their demand for payment in U.S. dollars as the local currency slumps.
The government and health workers are at an impasse after inflation jumped to 131.7% in May, a grim echo of the hyperinflation that wiped out people’s savings a decade ago.
“The salaries that the health workers received last week were pathetic,” Enock Dongo, head of the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association, told Reuters, adding that the majority were paid 20,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($53) a month.
He said health professionals across the country had decided to strike until they were paid US$540 a month, the pay they used to receive in 2018 before the local currency slumped.
Zimbabwe’s main nurses’ union urged the government to negotiate and warned that lives would be lost if the dispute was not resolved quickly.
It is worthwhile to note that President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from longtime leader Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup, has struggled to end an economic crisis that started under his predecessor.
