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President Mnangagwa yesterday pardoned medical doctors who have been on an illegal strike for the past two months, some of whom have been resultantly fired.

After his meeting with church leaders in Harare, the President accepted the clergymen’s request for the doctors who have been dismissed to be allowed back into service without the need to reapply and on guarantees that they would not be subjected to any questioning.

As we report elsewhere today, all the doctors who were fired recently for their illegal industrial action have 48-hours to return to work without reapplying or being asked too many questions.

The doctors were dismissed after they were found guilty of absenteeism following a court ruling declaring their strike illegal.

Disciplinary hearings were then instituted by the Health Service Board (HSB) against those doctors who failed to report for duty after the ruling, leading to the dismissal of 448 doctors as of November 26. 

Government yesterday gave them a reprieve following a long meeting between President Mnangagwa and his deputies Dr Constantino Chiwenga and Cde Kembo Mohadi, and the Catholic bishops led by the head of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference Archbishop of Harare, Robert Ndlovu, at State House in Harare.

“The bishops sent us a pastoral letter of issues they were raising across the board and asking to meet us as leadership. We acceded to their request and we have discussed these issues,” President Mnangagwa told journalists after the meeting. 

“I think the major issue that we have covered was the health sector and national health delivery, economic situation and social conditions of the people in the country, (the) political situation and the role and relations of political parties and national dialogue and last, Government, churches and civil society interaction.

“We covered all those areas. We found it very fruitful, the contribution by the bishops who came to meet us. Then, they requested for a moratorium on the question of doctors for two days. Could we offer a moratorium for two days for the doctors who have been dismissed to come back and join without application, just come back to work and we granted the request.”

Archbishop Ndlovu said: 

“We discussed a lot about the issue of striking doctors. What we managed to extract from Government was that they agreed to give (dismissed doctors) a moratorium for two days to report to work without having to reapply. They don’t need to apply as it had been decided by Cabinet. That one, Government has committed to that. 

“The second thing is that we are happy to hear that the Government say now, for our Mission hospitals, they are going to now help us to equip them and also to provide drugs. We discussed of course the economic situation, Government explaining the difficulties that are there but the efforts that they are also making and I think that is the main thing.” 

The announcement by the President yesterday is further evidence that the Government means well and does not want to be antagonistic with the doctors, a disposition that the employees must recognise for what it is. Also, the doctors must recognise that their strike is illegal following the recent court ruling to that effect and because of that, those who pressed on with the illegal strike were sanctioned in the manner the HSB did when it brought them to hearings and dismissed 448 of them.  

Although the law is firmly on its side, the HSB has not stopped persuading doctors to return to work.  This, also, did not stop the President from announcing yesterday that the doctors would be permitted to return to their work stations with no further sanctions.

We appreciate that doctors have a right to be paid higher salaries and improved working conditions.  In addition, they have a right to express themselves, protesting against their low salaries.  However, when a court of law rules that their protest is illegal, they are bound to respect that by calling off their strike and returning to work.  They have refused to obey the law.  

Meanwhile, the situation in public health centres is deteriorating. Patients are suffering unnecessarily.  There is a risk that some might be losing their lives because there are no doctors to attend to them.  

Over and above the HSB’s exhortations for them to return to work, the court ruling and yesterday’s plea by the President we urge the doctors to do the right thing, which is to return to work within 48 hours.