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NewsDay

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Harare council, nurses in salaries deadlock

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HARARE City Council (HCC) nurses are yet to report for duty with thousands of patients, mainly pregnant women now resorting to desperate measures to get medical attention.

BY PRECIOUS CHIDA

HARARE City Council (HCC) nurses are yet to report for duty with thousands of patients, mainly pregnant women now resorting to desperate measures to get medical attention.

City health services director Prosper Chonzi said council was frantically engaging the striking nurses to return to work.

“We are still in negotiations with the nurses’ representatives to solve this situation. The meeting is currently happening and only after this meeting will we be able to reveal if they are going back or not and when the closed clinics will be opened,” he said.

Council nurses recently defied an ultimatum to return to work, saying they would only report for duty once their demands for better pay are met.

Council officials and the striking nurses’ representatives were locked up in meetings for the better part of yesterday as the parties tried to come up with a solution to the deepening crisis.

In the past few weeks, patients seeking treatment at the council clinics were left stranded, while others had to wait for long periods to be attended to at the few clinics that were still open and manned only by sisters-in charge.

Pregnant mothers in Mbare were now resorting to backyard midwifery services where an unidentified woman made headlines for assisting in the birth of more than 100 children in the suburb.

Chonzi, however, said the Mbare Polyclinic and six other clinics in Hatcliffe, Kuwadzana and Mabvuku, out of the 12 owned by the council,have been reopened.

Zimbabwe Urban and Rural Council Nurses Workers’ Union secretary-general Tedious Chisango said they would only return to work when their salaries are pegged to the interbank market rate.

“We have also clearly indicated to the council to pay us our salaries at the current interbank rate, not the peanuts we are getting. On my contract of employment, I signed for a salary of US$940, not ZWL$1 200,” he said.