Zim Online
Wednesday 03 January 2007
HARARE -
Drama and tragedy on Tuesday connived to illustrate fast
deteriorating
conditions in Zimbabwe's major state hospitals where doctors
have for the
past week absconded duty in protest against poor pay and
working
conditions.
A pregnant mother and her unborn baby died owing to a burst
placenta and
another, unable to withstand labour pains due to lack of
medical attention
from nurses on duty, bolted out naked from a maternity
ward at Lady Rodwell
Maternity ward in the second largest city of Bulawayo,
as intern doctors
turned the screws on government to force it to improve
conditions of
services.
The strike, which began at Mpilo Hospital in
Bulawayo eight days, ago has
spread to major hospitals
countrywide.
In July, the Ministry of Health promised better working
conditions and a
review of salaries and conditions of service of intern
doctors commonly
referred to as junior doctors in Zimbabwe.
Nothing
has been done up to date, prompting the intern doctors - who
effectively run
the public health delivery system because senior doctors
spend most of their
time at their private rooms - to down tools.
Since December 21 last year,
medical officers have been on a go-slow,
awaiting a government
response.
"We have realised that we have been living on false promises,"
said Amon
Siveregi, an intern at the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in
Harare and one
the biggest referral medical centres in Zimbabwe.
The
doctors who earn $56 800 a month plus $57 000 in housing, transport and
on-call allowances are demanding a basic salary of $5
million.
Another doctor at Harare Hospital also in the capital,
Simbarashe Ndoda told
ZimOnline that incentives including mini-electric
stoves, television sets
and beds offered by the government during
negotiations with doctors'
representatives amounted to an insult on the
medical officers.
He said: "Giving doctors incentives such as a two-plate
stove, a
refrigerator, a bed and a television set for those that are
deployed to
district hospitals is an admission on the part of government
that it is
paying us a pittance. All we are asking for is a living
wage."
Hospital Doctors' Association president Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa
vowed that
doctors would not return to work until the government agreed to
pay "living
wages".
"The government should pay doctors reasonable
salaries to prevent skilled
medical personnel from migrating to other
countries. We also need an
immediate improvement of our working conditions
in all government
hospitals," Nyamutukwa said.
To exacerbate the
situation at state hospitals - the source of health for
the vast majority of
Zimbabweans - senior doctors who were spending more
time at public hospitals
in the absence of interns were said to have now
also joined in the
industrial action in solidarity with their juniors'
demands for better
pay.
Contacted for comment on the fast deteriorating situation at public
hospitals, Deputy Health Minister Edwin Muguti said the government was
working flat out to review junior doctors' conditions of service and
salaries.
"The government is working very hard to try and address
their (doctors')
concerns as we are aware that they are unhappy about their
salaries,
accommodation and car loans and the issue is being dealt with as
we speak,"
said Muguti.
He did not say when the cash-strapped
government hoped to have finalised
reviewing doctors' salaries or whether it
had the resources to meet the
doctors' demands.
But talking to the
striking doctors one got the impression that the interns,
who each year must
down tools several times to press for more pay, are
pysched up for a long
stay away from work.
Apart from a new and higher basic pay, the doctors
are also demanding car
loans of $2.5 million insisting that the $700 000
loan they are getting at
present is insufficient to buy a reliable
vehicle.
The intern doctors are also unhappy a newly introduced Health
Service
Commission tasked to improve conditions of service for state medical
personnel will exclude junior doctors.
Zimbabwe has suffered the
worst brain-drain of doctors, nurses and other
professionals as economic
conditions continue to deteriorate.
And the latest doctors' strike comes
hardly two months after another
paralysing work boycott at Bulawayo's Mpilo
Hospital last November.
Zimbabwe's health delivery system, once lauded as
one of the best in Africa,
has crumbled due to years of under-funding and
mismanagement.
An unprecedented seven-year old economic crisis has seen
the country fail to
import critically needed medicines because of a severe
shortage of foreign
currency. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 03 January 2007
BULAWAYO
- Three illegal gold miners from southern Zimbabwe died of
suspected hunger
and exhaustion after being forced by the police to work for
six days,
filling up trenches left open by other gold panners while also
being denied
food, sources told ZimOnline.
The sources - who are members of the police
- identified the deceased gold
diggers as Thulani Moyo, 23, Mathew Shumba,
30, and Gift Sibanda, 37, all of
rural Inyathi district in the country's
mineral-rich Matabeleland region.
The three men who died at separate
times on December 24 are said to have
complained of dizziness and hunger
before collapsing and dying. The police
had held them since December 17 when
they were arrested together with 12
other panners under a crackdown on
illegal miners that has seen about 18 000
people arrested countrywide since
last month.
A police officer, who we shall not name to protect him, said:
"For six days
they (panners) worked without food, filling up the trenches.
When they tried
to resist or complained that they were hungry, we beat them
up because that's
how our bosses had instructed us to treat
them.
"But on the 24th when we had just returned from filling up
trenches, one of
the panners started complaining that he was filling dizzy.
He collapsed and
was pronounced dead on arrival at Inyathi district
hospital. The other two
guys died later in the evening after also
complaining of hunger and
exhaustion."
According to the policeman, no
action has been taken to date against his
colleagues who detained the
panners and forced them to do heavy manual work
on little or no
food.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena refused to take questions on the
deaths of
the three men or on allegations that they were beaten and denied
food while
in custody.
"(On) the deaths, I am sorry I have no comment
to make," Bvudzijena said.
But the police spokesman defended forcing
panners to fill up trenches
because they were the ones who dug them up in
the first place. ''We make
them fill up trenches as they are the ones
responsible for the mess," he
said.
Illegal mining of and other
precious minerals such as diamonds has become
rampant in most parts of the
country as thousands of Zimbabweans battle to
make ends meet after years of
a severe economic crisis that has spawned
shortages of jobs, food and other
basic survival commodities, while
inflation has shot to more than 1 000
percent.
The illegal miners have however wrought havoc on the environment
through
their rudimentary mining methods.
But a government campaign
to stamp out illegal mining dubbed "Operation
Makorokoza Zvakwana" that was
launched last month has also resulted in more
reports of alleged human
rights violations by the police and other state
security agencies who are
accused of wantonly beating up and torturing
villagers they suspect of
engaging in illegal mining.
For example, the army last month detained 430
people at one of its camps in
Mashonaland West province and for several days
refused to hand over the
civilians to the police, demanding that they first
cover trenches they had
dug up at a farm near the camp.
This was
despite the fact that the army does not have arresting powers at
law besides
it also being illegal to detain suspects for more than 48 hours
without
taking them to court. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 03 January 2007
MASVINGO - An
outbreak of armyworm has hit some parts of the southern
Masvingo province
barely a week after a similar outbreak was reported in
Lower Guruve in the
Zambezi Valley.
Farmers in Masvingo told ZimOnline yesterday that the
armyworm, which can
destroy crops and pastures within a few hours, were
first detected in Gutu
district in the last week of December.
The
farmers said they were having problems in containing the spread of the
armyworm because of a shortage of chemicals to kill the worms.
"We
first saw these worms during the last week of December. We then
approached
agricultural extension officers but nothing has been done up to
now.
"The problem is that we do not have the money to buy the
required chemicals
to kill the worms and this is going to affect our yields
this year," said
Samuel Mpomi of Chikwanda communal lands in
Gutu.
Another farmer from Bikita, Samson Garauzive said they had resorted
to
killing the worms by hand as they did not have the money to buy
chemicals.
"We have resorted to killing the worms physically but it
appears we are not
making any headway. We have also tried to use traditional
methods but were
are not succeeding," said Garauzive.
A senior
official with the Agricultural Rural Extension Services (AREX),
Nyasha
Pambirei, confirmed the outbreak but said the situation was under
control.
"Farmers should not panic. The outbreak is just minor and we
have the
required personnel to deal with the problem," said
Pambirei.
The armyworm breeds rapidly and can destroy acres of crops
within a short
time.
Efforts to contain the armyworm have however
been hampered in the past by a
severe shortage of foreign currency to import
chemicals. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Wednesday 03 January 2007
HARARE -
Cricket stakeholders in Zimbabwe say they will turn to the courts
to have
last week's board elections held last week be overturned saying the
electoral process was deeply flawed, ZimOnline can reveal.
The
elections retained the current controversial board headed by Peter
Chingoka.
The new board is expected to be in office for the next four years.
But
other stakeholders and disgruntled cricket members in the country claim
that
the elections were not properly conducted and want them run
afresh.
Although details were still sketchy yesterday, ZimOnline
authoritatively
gathers that the stakeholders are coming together to take
the matter up with
the courts.
"In the first place, these people who
have been retained are the very people
the players want out of cricket and
they went on to manipulate the system so
that they could win.
"There
was no proper notification of the elections and those who were made
to vote
were handpicked by the elected board members. Provinces were not
given time
to deliberate before the elections and most people were surprised
to read in
the newspapers that elections had been conducted.
"Questions have also
been raised over the background of some of the elected
officers. This is a
clear scandal meant to protect the interests of a few
individuals at the
expense of the game," said a stakeholder who refused to
be named.
The
stakeholders are also concerned that most of those re-elected have been
implicated in financial scandals at Zimbabwe Cricket.
The re-elected
board had presided over the rapid demise of cricket in
Zimbabwe with senior
world-class players refusing to play for Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has now been
reduced to whipping boys of world cricket and were
recently whitewashed by
minnows Bangladesh.
Besides Chingoka, five other directors were elected.
These are Wilson
Manase, Sylvester Matshaka, Charles Maunze, Tavengwa
Mukuhlani and Maureen
Kuchocha.
The others, Cyprian Mandenge, Arthur
Maphosa, Baureni Matemai, Philip
Matiza, Josphat Mbanda, Brian Mugota and
Lavert Zungunde - were elected by
the provincial chairmen invited by the
Chingoka board.
Controversial ZC managing director, Ozias Bvute will also
continue with his
duties. - ZimOnline
VOA
By Jonga Kandemiiri
Washington
02 January
2007
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe Secretary General
Raymond Majongwe
said Tuesday that he has received anonymous threatening
phone calls after
reports aired Monday on state media that his union is
giving radios to
members so they can receive announcements of a future
uprising from
independent radio stations.
Police and security agents
in Masvingo Province recently confiscated donated
radios from PTUZ members,
prompting the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights to
seek the restoration of
the radios through the courts. A Gokwe magistrate
ordered the police must
return the radios, but sources close to the matter
said they have not done
so.
Majongwe said there is nothing wrong with his union giving radios its
members, noting that President Robert Mugabe has similarly donated computers
to schools.
Majongwe told reporter Jonga Kandemiiri of VOA's Studio 7
for Zimbabwe that
threats will not discourage him from providing union
members with radios to
receive news.
VOA
By Carole Gombakomba
Washington
02 January
2007
Human rights activists looking back at 2006 say they saw
a deterioration
throughout the country, leaving them pessimistic on the
chances of
improvement in 2007.
Rights defenders point to the
September beatings of trade union leaders in
Harare after a demonstration,
allegedly at police hands, as a worrisome sign
of an escalating use of
violence by security forces responding to
anti-government
protests.
During the year more than 1,000 activists of the National
Constitutional
Assembly, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, the Zimbabwe National
Students Union and
other groups were taken into custody by police and at
times allegedly beaten
as they demonstrated or attempted to stage protests
in Harare and other
cities around the country.
Local and
international rights organisations including the Human Rights NGO
Forum,
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called attention to
such
alleged human rights violations by the government of President Robert
Mugabe. Harare for its part has generally rejected such accusations, saying
they have been conjured up by groups that are funded by Western powers
intent on ousting Mr. Mugabe.
For an examination of the human rights
outlook, reporter Carole Gombakomba
called on human rights lawyers Joyce
Siveregi, a Humphrey fellow at American
University in Washington, and Otto
Saki, a member of the Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human Rights. Saki said the
Zimbabwean state tightened its grip on
rights during 2006.
VOA
By Blessing Zulu
Washington
02 January
2007
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, staking
out his position on
a ruling party proposals to postpone the country's next
presidential
election, urged President Robert Mugabe step down in 2008 or
call a
referendum on rescheduling the ballot.
Tsvangirai said the
proposal from Mr. Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party to
"harmonize" presidential
and general elections by holding both in 2010 could
be a turning point in
the country's crisis. He noted that it has united
opposition politicians and
members of the ruling party who oppose the
effective two-year extension of
Mr. Mugabe's term.
The ruling party has fallen short of unanimity on the
proposal. Eight out of
10 ZANU-PF provincial organizations expressed support
for the
"harmonization" plan when it was brought up at the ruling party's
annual
conference early last month.
Ruling party insiders say the
proposal was not formally adopted because of
resistance from top party
officials, some of whom are interested in
succeeding Mr. Mugabe. It has been
sent to Zanu-PF's central committee for
further
consideration.
Opposition parties and civic groups have vowed to resist
the move.
Tsvangirai told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that
Mr. Mugabe must not be allowed to become Zimbabwe's president
for life.
VOA
By
Carole Gombakomba
Washington
02 January
2007
Zimbabwean Health Minister David Parirenyatwa took a hard
line Tuesday with
about 350 hospital residents whose strike continued to
cripple operations at
the four main government hospitals in Harare, the
capital, and Bulawayo.
Launched by junior residents two weeks ago and
joined by senior residents
last week, the strike has closed hospital
casualty departments. Hospital
sources said emergency cases are being
treated by senior consultants and
non-striking foreign doctors.
A
representative of the striking doctors, Amon Siveregi, said Parirenyatwa
called off a meeting that had been scheduled Tuesday, telling the doctors he
would only negotiate with them once they had returned to work. He warned the
striking physicians that his ministry would take "drastic " measures against
them if they did not end the strike.
Dr. Parirenyatwa, himself a
physician, could not be reached for comment.
The doctors are demanding
higher salaries and improved working conditions.
Junior doctors currently
earn Z$56,000 a month, beneath the official poverty
line.
VOA
By Chris
Gande
Washington
02 January 2007
Former
Zimbabwean information minister Jonathan Moyo, who represents the
Matabeleland North constituency of Tsholotsho in parliament, is said to be
preparing legislation that would compensate the victims of the
post-independence purge carried out in the Matabeleland region against
loyalists of the late Joshua Nkomo.
Moyo could not be reached for
comment, but parliamentary sources said he had
been lobbying support for a
private member's bill called the Gukurahundi
Memorial Bill.
The bill
seeks compensation for victims of the killings of civilians in the
early
1980s by a special army unit known as Gukurahundi, after a word in the
Shona
language that means "the early rain that washes away the chaff before
the
spring rains."
According to the Wikipedia, the North Korean-trained Fifth
Brigade swept
through the Ndebele-speaking Matabeleland and Midlands
provinces between
1982 and 1985, killing thousands of civilians presumed
loyal to Zimbabwe
African People's Union leader Joshua Nkomo, rival of then
Prime Minister
Robert Mugabe.
Factional and inter-ethnic violence was
brought to an end in 1987 with the
signing of a Unity Accord under which
alleged dissidents were granted
amnesty. Mugabe became president and Nkomo
became vice president, serving
until his death in 1999.
Moyo's bill
would make it a crime to deny the Gukurahundi atrocities. It
would also call
for the establishment of a Gukurahundi national memorial
board and
museum.
Political commentator and Zimbabwe Open University journalism
lecturer
Jethro Mpofu told reporter Chris Gande of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that
Moyo's Gukurahundi bill is likely to garner support from the
political
opposition.
The
Herald (Harare)
January 1, 2007
Posted to the web January 2,
2007
Enacy Mapakame
Harare
THE Infrastructure Development Bank
of Zimbabwe requires at least US$100
million for the resuscitation of the
country's horticulture infrastructure.
In its corporate profile, the bank
noted that there were investment
opportunities that could be explored in the
horticulture industry given
adequate infrastructure and support in areas of
developing greenhouses,
cultivation and packaging of
perishables.
"Opportunities in this sector include the development of
infrastructure for
the cultivation and export of citrus fruits, vegetables
and flowers,
including packing and packaging facilities.
"A minimum
of US$100 million would enable rehabilitation and resuscitation
of a number
of horticulture infrastructure projects," said IDBZ.
The bank added that
given its quick turnaround in terms of crop production
and processing, there
was great potential for additional foreign currency
earnings from
horticulture, apart from the traditional agricultural products
such as
tobacco, cotton, tea and sugar.
"There are a number of enterprises that
have achieved significant success in
penetrating overseas markets for
packaged fruit and vegetables.
"In some cases, these products are packed
and labelled in Zimbabwe and
exported to overseas markets such as Tesco and
Sainsburys (supermarket
chains in the United Kingdom)," said
IDBZ.
Horticultural production declined in the past few years due to a
variety of
factors, among them drought and the arrival of many new and
inexperienced
players in the sector within a short period.
Positive
growth has, however, been witnessed over the past two years.
In this
regard IDBZ said focus was now on achieving maximum productivity in
the
sector to ensure self-sufficiency and enhance foreign exchange
generation.
The Herald
(Harare)
January 1, 2007
Posted to the web January 2,
2007
Harare
THE Zimbabwe Investment Authority Act is now in
operation after President
Mugabe fixed January 1, 2007 as the date on which
the law comes into force.
This was contained in a notice published in
last Friday's Extraordinary
Government Gazette.
The Zimbabwe
Investment Authority Act provides for the establishment of a
one-stop
investment shop responsible for implementing promotion of
decentralisation
of investment activities and supervising the implementation
of approved
projects among other issues.
The Act also provides for an 11-member board
appointed by the Minister of
Industry and International Trade in
consultation with the President.
An investment committee would also
be set up with responsibility for making
recommendations to the board for
approval or rejection of application for
investment licences.
Under
the Act, the board would be required to submit reports to the minister
on
its operations and other issues as the minister may require.
The minister
would be mandated with publishing guidelines for investment,
which shall
mention general incentives that may be applicable to licenced
investors,
whether foreign or local.
The Herald
(Harare)
January 1, 2007
Posted to the web January 2,
2007
Harare
GOVERNMENT has gazetted application fees for the
registration of mass media
services and accreditation of
journalists.
Application for registration of mass media service and a
news agency would
be $600 000.
This is made up of an application
fee of $100 000 and a registration fee of
$500 000.
A Zimbabwean
journalist working for a local media house will pay $10 000
application fee
and $15 000 accreditation fee, while a local freelance
journalist will pay
an application fee of $15 000 and an accreditation fee
of $20
000.
The late renewal of accreditation will attract a penalty of $10 000
per day,
$100 000 per day for late renewal of registration and $25 000 for a
lost
accreditation card.
A local journalist working for a foreign
media would pay an application fee
of US$200 and an accreditation fee of
US$1 000.
Application for a temporary accreditation for a foreign
journalist will cost
US$100 while accreditation would cost
US$500.
Application for permission to operate a representative office of
foreign
mass media service or news agency would attract an application fee
of US$2
000 and a US$10 000 fee for permission to operate.
The fees
were gazetted under the Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy
(Registration, Accreditation and Levy) (Amendment) Regulations, 2006
(No.3)
published in last Friday's Government Gazette.
Comment from BBC News, 2 January
By Patrick Smith, Africa Confidential editor
This
was the year that the war on terror came of age in Africa, with the
Horn of
Africa simmering and a new regional conflagration looming. But 2006
was also
the year that China emerged as a dominant trading partner. China's
trade
with Africa is likely to hit $50bn in 2006, level-pegging with the
other big
trading blocs in Europe and North America. The grand African
summit in
Beijing in November set the seal on China's critical economic
role. But the
unfolding crises in the greater Horn of Africa are drawing
attention from
other important developments on the continent: African
economies are growing
at their fastest for almost three decades as foreign
interest booms in
African equities and money markets. And there is the
upcoming election
season in Africa that will shape the continent's
leadership for the next
five years. In 2007, some of Africa's biggest
countries are either holding
national elections (Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal,
Mali, Algeria, Morocco and
Sierra Leone) or recovering from them (the
Democratic Republic of Congo and
Egypt) or preparing for them in the near
future (Angola and South
Africa).
Hard-pressed officials at the African Union's (AU)
headquarters in Addis
Ababa complain that their workload focuses on the Horn
of Africa to the
detriment of continental issues such as political reform
and national crises
in Ivory Coast, Guinea, DR Congo and Zimbabwe. US
Assistant Secretary of
State for Africa Jendayi Frazer says she spent 80% of
her time in 2006 on
just two countries in the Horn of Africa - Sudan and
Somalia. The US's war
with al-Qaeda started in Africa when militants bombed
US embassies in
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998. The vast majority
of casualties
were African, none of whom have received any compensation.
Since then the US
and France have hugely expanded their military bases and
listening posts in
Djibouti from where they co-ordinate war on terror
operations. Somalia was a
test case for the war on terror strategists: it
showed how quickly a
national struggle for power can escalate into a
regional or even an
international conflict when external powers
intervene.
Both sides in Somalia's conflict called in foreign allies.
None of the
parties was interested in a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.
US
officials saw the Islamic courts regime in Mogadishu as an al-Qaeda front
with ambitions to turn Somalia into Africa's Afghanistan. European diplomats
differed with the US but lacked an alternative. The AU split with many
sub-Saharan countries backing Ethiopia's intervention against the Islamists
in Mogadishu while North African states backed the Islamic courts. The Arab
League was sympathetic to the Islamists in Mogadishu, and several of its
members supplied them with arms. It is dangerously reminiscent of the Cold
War era when the US backed Ethiopia in the Ogaden war against Somalia, which
was then backed by the Soviet Union. National wars in Angola, Mozambique,
and the DR Congo were also exacerbated by Cold War powers and their regional
proxies taking sides.
At the other end of Horn of Africa's arc of
crisis is Sudan where President
Omar al-Bashir's Islamist regime has faced
mounting pressure over its
attacks on civilians in the western province of
Darfur. Although Mr Bashir
publicly capitulated in December to international
demands that he allow a UN
peacekeeping force to protect civilians there, UN
officials still expect to
face huge obstacles on the ground. Mr Bashir's
regime, having hosted Osama
bin Laden in Khartoum in the 1990s, has played
its hand carefully in the
US's war on terror. Under pressure from
Washington, Khartoum sent its
intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, to
brief Western intelligence
officials about al-Qaeda networks in Sudan and
beyond and it agreed to join
a serious effort to negotiate a peace with its
opponents in southern Sudan.
Beyond the Horn, other African states
have taken up 'war on terror'
rhetoric. Until recently, Uganda's President
Yoweri Museveni rejected
negotiations with the Lord's Resistance Army, which
he designated as mere
terrorists. Congolese and Rwandan rebels have likewise
been branded as
terrorists and beyond negotiation; oppositionists in Malawi
and Zambia have
been labelled as terrorists and putchists. Authoritarian
leaders in Africa
have new choices. Like Equatorial Guinea's President
Teodoro Obiang they can
stamp on their opponents and claim to be key allies
in the war on terror and
hand out oil acreage to Western oil companies. If
that fails they can call
up Beijing and offer more oil acreage or mining
licences for precious metals
for which they can negotiate some hefty
development funds without any
lectures about democracy and human rights. For
Africa's hardened
pro-democracy activists, 2007 is set to be a busy
year.