Doctors For Human Rights Condemn Plan To Criminalise Recruitment Of Healthcare Workers By Foreigners

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) has condemned the government’s plan to criminalise the recruitment of healthcare workers to work in other countries.

Speaking to VOA on Friday, ZADHR president Norman Matara said that any attempt to prevent healthcare workers from leaving the country for better jobs would be illegal. He said:

Also our constitution, the Zimbabwe constitution, guarantees citizens have the right to move freely within the country or leave the country.

We don’t know why those comments were made by the honorable minister of health.

The government continues to use scare tactics and command approach to solving healthcare problems.

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The government should note that health workers are not being pulled away from the country but pushed away from the country by the meager salaries they are getting. They are being pushed by the worsening economic crisis in the country.

They are being pushed by poor working conditions: lack of equipment, lack of sundries, and lack of medicines in the hospitals that they work in.

We urge the government to improve working conditions, and pay a living wage, you will find that people will not leave the country.

Last week Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who is also the Minister of Health and Childcare, said the country will enact a law to make it illegal for other countries to hire healthcare workers from Zimbabwe.

Chiwenga also said the drain of healthcare professionals was as good as human trafficking and a crime against humanity.

Eustina Shava, a nurse who is leaving Zimbabwe in May for better work in Canada, told VOA that foreign recruiters are doing nothing wrong and their work should therefore not be criminalised. She said:

If we were given enough money, I don’t think anybody would love to leave their families, their relatives and work abroad.

But at the end of the day, we all want to achieve good things in life. We all want to buy houses, we all want to buy cars and we all want to send our children to good schools.

That’s the reason we are reaching out to recruiters. They have done nothing wrong. They are actually helping us to achieve certain things in life.

Reports indicate that more than 4 000 nurses and doctors have left Zimbabwe since February 2021.

Last month, the UK stopped the recruitment of Zimbabwean health workers. This was after Zimbabwe was placed by the World Health Organisation on the red list.

WHO red list designation means that the country is facing serious health personnel challenges.

More: Pindula News