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Dr Gerald Gwinji

Junior doctors took a commendable decision to sign their employment contracts on Tuesday, ending a 36-day strike that had compromised services at major public hospitals countrywide.

The stand-off over salaries, allowances and working conditions had caused the closure of the outpatients department at Mpilo Central Hospital. Some patients with “minor” ailments were being turned away from referral hospitals elsewhere.

The worst affected were Mpilo, United Bulawayo Hospitals, Parirenyatwa, Harare and Chitungwiza hospitals.

The 78 doctors were unhappy because the contract shortens their mandatory period of service in public service from three years to two, pegs their salary at $895 per month while being silent on allowances, prohibits them from joining trade unions and says female professionals cannot get pregnant within 12 months of their service. By and large, they complained that the contract violates their constitutional rights and enslaves them.

They signed them regardless and were back at their work stations yesterday.

“In the interests of patients, we’ve decided to end this stalemate and join the country’s health sector although we’re not happy with the contracts being offered. We also discovered that some signed the contracts Nicodemously, so we feared victimisation,” said the doctors, through a representative.

Dr Gerald Gwinji, the Ministry of Health and Child Care permanent secretary, confirmed the development which we welcome.

Strikes at public hospitals tend to affect the poor and low-income earners who cannot seek treatment at private hospitals that are more expensive. Amid strikes, the poor fail to access health services yet our constitution guarantees the right of access to them.

Therefore, we laud the doctors for their decision that was influenced by their consideration of the impact of their strike on patients.

It doesn’t look too pleasing though, that some sticking points that the doctors raised remain unresolved. To us, the signing of the contracts and doctors’ return to work is merely a truce, not a sustainable settlement that engenders that sense of calm and stability that everyone needs for a critical sector as the health service.

We don’t know why the Health Service Board (HSB) reduced the period over which the doctors can work at public hospitals from three years to two. On salaries, we consider that the government is struggling with many obligations and the $895 per month is possibly what the employer is able to pay. The package looks small for a doctor given the life-saving job he or she does, but in the prevailing difficult economic circumstances we think it is tolerable.

Regarding the prohibition on junior doctors joining trade unions, we agree with them when they complain.

We are, however, most surprised by the clause in the contracts that binds female doctors not to get pregnant in their first 12 months of service. We take this as a serious assault on their reproductive rights. Furthermore, we doubt that this clause can pass the gender equality test in a country that is doing so much to lift women from their traditionally inferior status.

A few years ago, the government came up with a decision that sees no big problem in college and university students getting pregnant. Regulations allow them to attend lectures while pregnant and can have time to look after their babies and return to class.

At a more important level, the Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda recently won plaudits in the House after he made a landmark decision permitting breastfeeding MPs to bring their babies to the House and can have breastfeeding breaks. Room for a nursery was being set aside at the august house where the kids can sleep and play while their mothers make laws in the chamber.

Now for the HSB to come up with a contract that contains a clause banning female junior doctors from getting pregnant for 12 months is shocking given the context of national efforts to attain gender equality and promote reproductive rights of everyone. This, to us, is an open invitation to concerned professionals to proceed to exercise their reproductive rights, get pregnant within the prescribed 12-months if they choose to and wait to see what the HSB will do and say to them.

If the HSB fires the lady doctor, who then approaches the Constitutional Court, we don’t think the employer will have a chance. A pregnancy is not a disabling condition. Many professionals, even students fall pregnant and that does not make them unfit to do their jobs or studies as well as their male counterparts.