Retired Colonel Lands Top Post At Parirenyatwa, Doctors Threaten Strike
In a development that borders on favouritism, the Health Services Board (HSB) has offered Dr Chagumira employment as a supernumerary ahead of doctors in training who have been offering services at Parirenyatwa for free, for over 4 years.
The appointment of Dr Chagumira, a Retired Colonel from the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, has not gone down well with doctors at the country’s largest referral hospital.
The doctors have since written to the HSB, airing their grievances and threatening to go on strike if the appointment is not reversed in 72 hours. The wrote:
It has come to our understanding that one of the posts meant for our supernumerary registrars has been awarded to a Retired Colonel Dr Chagumira from the defence forces of Zimbabwe by the Health Services Board (HSB).
We have been fighting for SHO posts as well as for our supernumerary registrars to be recruited by the government for over 4 years now, as they can go for up to 5 years working without remuneration.
We are aware that these posts had been availed to us in the past two weeks, and it comes as a shock that a retired doctor has been called back from retirement to take up such a post when able-bodied doctors that are already working in the system have not been absorbed.
We have nothing against the above-mentioned doctor. We are truly displeased by these turn of events and we will withdraw our services in 72 hours if this anomaly is not rectified.
In short, we are requesting that our unpaid registrars be absorbed by the government and be remunerated accordingly, and the SHO posts be given to those who have applied for them in our department.
