editorial comment
LAST week, after doctors demanded that Health and Child Care minister Obadiah Moyo should either be censored by Parliament or he resign for running down the country’s health delivery system, the minister’s response that he “serves at the pleasure of the President” was brazenly rude.
So if he serves at the pleasure of the President then he has no business running that ministry because he is not President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s personal poodle. He should serve the nation Zimbabwe.
This is more so because ever since the doctors fingered him as being the chief culprit behind the rot in the health sector the doctors have revealed a lot of anomalies mainly bordering on corruption which should not be ignored.
Among many of the doctors’ concerns are issues to do with the abuse of the allowances under the Global Fund meant to “restrain” doctors from leaving the country for greener pastures.
We hear that some doctors are not being paid, raising questions as to where that money is going. And when the minister is alerted about these issues, but instead decides to be rude, should he honestly remain in his position?
The doctors have also told us that the purported new equipment that was bought from Indian last year is obsolete which means that the US$600 000 that was used to buy it could have been abused. But minister Moyo again chooses to blame the doctors’ industrial action for the deaths in government hospitals, yet it is so glaringly obvious that the health institutions don’t have adequate equipment and drugs. Why is Moyo so quick to blame someone else except himself? What is he in charge of at the ministry when things are so out of control under his watch? Does he even know what he is supposed to be doing at the ministry?
All these learned doctors have surely not lost their marbles. Something must be the matter in the health sector and its high time Mnangagwa acted on the issues they are raising. There is surely no smoke without fire. And Moyo cannot let the situation deteriorate to such levels that innocent people lose their lives simply because of his conceited belief that he “serves at the pleasure of the President”. Moyo must be made accountable and should honourably resign as he has failed, rather than allow our health system to collapse right under his watch.
