Zimbabwe’s VP and Minister of Health, Dr Constantino Chiwenga ask the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help stem the haemorrhage of Zimbabwe health care workers.
"One of the problems we discussed is workforce. For the health system to be strong you need to have workforce in terms of number and in terms of quality but Zimbabwe is worried that many high income countries are taking its doctors and nurses and the country is now facing shortages locally," revealed WHO director-general Dr Ghebreyesus after his meeting with VP Chiwenga.
"He (VP Chiwenga) asked if WHO could really help to address this issue. Of course, there are two things we can do. One there is a code of conduct so those countries poaching health workers from low income countries should follow the code of conduct.
"The second strategic solution is to train more since the problem is supply and demand mismatch. There are models now we have been considering in WHO that can help, that is increasing the enrolment significantly so that it can address the shortages that we are facing, so it is a combination of short and long term.”
This is a waste of time! It is not just nurses and doctors who are leaving the country in droves; teachers, engineers, etc. are doing the same. And they are leaving for high income nations as well as low income nations just to escape the slave-wages offered in Zimbabwe!
Zimbabwe is a failed state, a pariah state, whose economy has all but collapsed. The ruling elite and their cronies have sucked the life blood out of the economy to feed their insatiable appetite for wealth and luxuries, they have become filthy rich at the expense of the millions condemned to poverty and despair. Many of the people who can leave the country have left just to escape a life of abject poverty.
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown means there is very little revenue for the government to pay the bloated civil service, equally bloated Army, Police and CIO and so education, health and other social welfare services have been thrown overboard in fight to contain inflation.
The nurses and teachers have been fighting for a living wage for donkey years with no progress. None! Their wages are so poor many cannot afford the transport to go to work everyday and so have resorted to work reduced days.
It is nonsensical to mourn of brain drain when the government is failing to make full use of the reduced manpower still in the country because it will not pay them to work a full week.
The haemorrhaging of skilled workers out of the country is the symptom and not the disease. The disease is the country’s economic meltdown which is forced the people to leave or suffer in damn anguish. And the economic meltdown is itself the consequence of four decades of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and lawlessness under this Mafiosi Zanu PF dictatorship.
Ordinarily the nation would have remove the regime ages ago if the country was a healthy and functioning democracy. It is not!
Zanu PF has rigged elections starting with the 1980 elections when it made it clear the bush war would continue if the party lost. The party is rigging these 2023 election and thus confirming the country’s status as a pariah state, a failed Mafiosi dictatorship. There is no hope of economic revival because no one would want to do business in a fail and chaotic state.
Increasing the number of trained staff will not solve anything if the individuals will leave as soon as they complete their training. With nurses being paid US$100 p m way below the US$650 p m poverty datum line; who would want these starvation wages.
Of course, it is a waste of time trying to stem the haemorrhage of skilled manpower, the symptom, out of Zimbabwe without first dealing with its root cause the failed state, the disease. Of all people WHO should know treating the symptom and not the disease is a waste of time, resources and, worst of all of human lives!
UN has turned a blind eye to Zimbabwe’s failure to hold free and fair elections all because China and Russia have always vetoed all attempts to censure Zanu PF human rights violations. It is to be expected given these two nations are themselves notorious for human rights violations including failure to hold free and fair elections, if they still bother. The UN and its subsidiary bodies including WHO are heavily compromised and ineffective to the point of treating symptoms and not the disease.
What we in Zimbabwe is to tell our “dunderhead” VP and Minister of Health, Chiwenga, and his Zanu PF cronies that they cannot have the cake and eat it too. The country cannot have the full compliment of skilled staff as long as the country remains a pariah state with no money to pay the workers a living wage. If Zimbabwe continues to pay peanuts it will have recruit monkeys!
The judge said "a voters roll is a very sensitive document" which if mishandled may compromise electoral issues.
ReplyDelete"It is wise that it is guarded jealously so that it's given to individuals when it's right.
"The 58 days which have lapsed since this application was launched cannot be said to be too long and taking into consideration that this case came to court prematurely.
"It is his (Makharm) right to request but in the same vein, ZEC is obliged to speedily come out with a voters roll with all security features.
"…In the final analysis, this court finds that this case lacks merit, is prematurely before the courts and that ZEC should make sure that it protects the voters' roll taking into consideration the Cyber Protection Act. Each party to bear its own costs," ruled the judge.
Katiyo said full reasons will be provided in due course.
High Court dismiss call for ZEC to release Voters Roll for “security reasons”.
Zimbabwe must be the only country in the world claiming to hold free, fair and credible election and yet has never ever produced a verified voters’ roll! Snippets of the voters’ roll that have fallen into public hands have turned out to have so many serious errors to render the voters’ roll meaningless.
If the High Court was really concerned about the security of the voters then why did he not order that an independent body must be appointed to an audit of the voters’ roll? This would have addressed the need for a verified voters’ roll with the need to keep the data secure!
Surely the judge must be aware of the democratic deficit born out of the failure to produce a verified voters’ roll! How can we have free, fair and credible elections without something as basic as a verified voters’ roll!
The willingness of the opposition to participate in these flawed elections even without a verified voters’ roll has only given the Zanu PF Mafiosi the confidence to break the rules as it wished.
Indeed, why would the party bother producing the voters’ roll and reduce it vote rigging options when it knows the opposition will participate even without a verified voters’ roll!
When VP Chiwenga took over the added responsibility of Minister of Health in August 2020, over and above those of VP, he promised to deliver a 5 star health service in a few months and he was cocksure he would. It has been nearly three years since that promise and, instead of a 5 star health services, things are even worse than ever.
ReplyDeleteVP Chiwenga has burning ambition to become State President!
This is the tragedy of Zimbabwe, it does not matter how high the mountain of evidence of Zanu PF’s failures, Chiwenga and his fellow Zanu PF cronies believe they and they alone have the divine right to rule Zimbabwe. They have devised for themselves carte blanche powers to rig elections and thus guarantee their iron grip on power. We are well and truly stuck with this Zanu PF dictatorship.
Zimbabwe is not going to escape from the this man-made hell-hole we find ourselves in until we cure ourselves of the curse of rigged elections that have kept this Mafiosi Zanu PF in power for 43 years and counting. Implementing the democratic reforms and free and fair elections must be the nation’s holy grail!
LOCAL churches have taken up voter registration campaigns to mobilise more eligible voters to register to vote in the forthcoming polls.
ReplyDeleteChristian denominations under the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) have incorporated the registration campaign, which is being held under the theme Pray, Register to vote and Vote, into their main Sunday programmes.
This comes as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) is also conducting voter education in communities ahead of its last voter registration blitz that will run from March 12 to 21, 2023.
ZCC general-secretary Wilfred Bimingo said the voter registration campaigns are aimed at amplifying the voice of Christians in electoral processes.
"Previous elections in the country have been violent and it had distanced the people of Zimbabwe, including Christians, from the electoral process," Bimingo said.
"We launched this campaign to educate and encourage people to vote, especially in the upcoming elections. It does not focus on registration alone, but on all other electoral processes. We are targeting young people. People should exercise the democratic right to vote, which also is a right given by God. We have seen an improvement in the participation of Christians in electoral processes following the launch of this campaign."
Zec statistics show that 5 804 975 people were on the 2023 voters roll as of April 2022, against an eligible voter population of 8 738 628.
Latest Election Resource Centre statistics show that Zimbabwe has the least number of voter turnouts among her peers in the Southern African Development Community.
Zambia had the highest voter turnout at 58,3 %, followed by South Africa and Botswana at 42,8% and 42,5%, respectively. Lesotho had a voter turnout of 37,8%, followed by Zimbabwe at 35,9%.
Yes, “people should exercise the democratic right to vote, which also is a right given by God.” But if getting 73% of the votes, as MDC did in 2008, is not good enough to win power then surely there is something wrong with the election process.
SADC leaders forced Zanu PF to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement, agreeing to the need for Zimbabwe to implement a raft of democratic reforms as the way to ensure free, fair and credible elections. Sadly not even one meaningful reform was implemented. Not one!
SADC leaders wanted the 2013 elections postponed until reforms are implemented. But once again, their sound advice was ignored.
What is really disappointing here is Zimbabwe’s civic society was fast asleep throughout the GNU because they never pressured MDC to implement the reforms or stop them participating until reforms are implemented. One would think that by now, after 2013 and 2018 rigged elections, the sleepy civic society will have finally woken up to the need for reforms before elections. Sadly the idiots are still snoring!
Bona Nyapudzai Ouma Mugabe filed the papers at the High Court today seeking an order for a decree of divorce. Bona and Simba married in 2014 at a glamorous ceremony attended by the political and business elite in Harare and outside the country.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the divorce papers, Mugabe has filed for full custody for her three children with Chikore granted visits every alternate weekend and is claiming US$8,100 monthly in maintenance.
The two have three children from their marriage with Mugabe now claiming US$2,700 per child a month in maintenance from Chikore.
This is what is outrageous about Zimbabwe, it is a failed state where the few ruling elite and their cronies have become filthy rich whilst the overwhelm majority are sinking deeper and deeper into abject poverty and despair.
Bona must know her husband can afford US$8 100 p m, otherwise she would not be asking for it. There millions of Zimbabweans out there who are more talented and work harder than Simba Chikore and yet are making US$81 p m - 1% - or less!
In Zimbabwe hard work and talent counts for nothing, what you know and can do is of no value, it is whom you know that matters. No wonder the country is in a mess the criminal waste of human and material resources is both shocking and unsustainable.
Zimbabwe’s political system is a sewage swamp and we must drain it completely and have a fresh and clean start! We need to implement the democratic reforms and hold free and fair elections as the only sure way to end Zanu PF’s tyrannical ruling elite’s strangle hold on the nation.