Zimbabwe health workers strike after rejecting 100% pay rise

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HARARE, June 20 (Reuters) – Zimbabwean well being personnel went on strike on Monday right after rejecting a 100% wage hike present final week, pressing their demand for payment in U.S. bucks as the area forex slumps.

Zimbabwe’s key nurses’ union urged the federal government to negotiate and warned that lives would be shed if the dispute was not solved speedily.

The govt and well being employees are at an deadlock after inflation jumped to 131.7% in May perhaps, a grim echo of the hyperinflation that wiped out people’s discounts a ten years back.

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Authorities workers turned down the beneath-inflation 100% wage hike present on Friday.

At Sally Mugabe Hospital in Harare, patients trying to find cure sat in the courtyard though doctors, nurses, radiographers and pharmacists left their workplaces to protest.

“The salaries that the well being personnel acquired past week were pathetic,” Enock Dongo, head of the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Affiliation, informed Reuters, including that the greater part were compensated 20,000 Zimbabwe pounds ($53) a thirty day period.

He reported wellness gurus across the region had determined to strike until eventually they ended up compensated US$540 a thirty day period, the pay they utilised to obtain in 2018 before the local currency slumped.

A authorities spokesperson did not straight away react to a ask for for comment.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took above from longtime chief Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup, has struggled to end an economic crisis that started off underneath his predecessor.

($1 = 378.0000 Zimbabwe pounds)