GOVERNMENT appears to be hardening its stance on vaccination, making it mandatory for civil servants to get the jabs to curb the coronavirus despite the obvious fact that it impinges on their right to choose.
Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi at the weekend, during a COVID-19 assessment tour in Chinhoyi, told civil servants to get vaccinated or quit their public jobs.
“When you get employed, you cede some of the rights, and so if you want to be employed here get vaccinated. So, the Public Service Commission has regulations which we must comply with if you are a civil servant. If you don’t want to comply with that, you have a right to quit,” Ziyambi said.
His statement echoed the one made last week by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Ntabazinduna during a graduation ceremony of Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) officers, where he implied that government would make it compulsory for everyone to be inoculated.
Government last week gave a two-week ultimatum to unvaccinated frontline workers to receive their jabs, or else they would not receive their insurance pay-outs if they contracted the virus on duty.
Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa, at a post-Cabinet media briefing last week, said 20% of frontline workers were not vaccinated, and that government would compel them to get the jabs for the fight against the respiratory disease to be effective.
Chairperson of the national COVID-19 taskforce and Defence minister, Oppah Muchinguri, said about 90% of the security officers had been vaccinated, but thankfully, did not issue any threats.
“We are very pleased by the results that we have attained so far coming from the civil service sector and it also translates to the military and security sector. I would say 90% of our security and defence forces are also vaccinated.”
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Government must be clear in its direction, and must be seen to be following due process instead of threats. If it wants vaccination to be mandatory, then it should consider putting in place the necessary legal instruments and not resort to threats.
Without legal declaration, vaccination remains voluntary and no civil servant in a democratic nation can be fired for not getting vaccinated, whatever the threats the President and his ministers spew.
Vaccination hesitancy is a problem in Zimbabwe, but that is largely because the government has failed to put out coherent messaging to convince the public about the dangers of COVID-19 and how inoculation could save lives.
With the country expecting two million vaccines from China this week, we think availing information is more urgent than threats.
