Zimbabwe’s nurses are “living in abject poverty, unable to afford basic necessities” 

Zimbabwe’s nurses “are living in abject poverty, unable to afford even the most basic necessities of life,” Enock Dongo, president of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA), said in a statement earlier this week.

Real wages in the country have sharply declined since 2018, when Zimbabwe embarked on a failed experiment with a new currency. Initially pegged at 1:1 with the USD, it sharply lost its value, eating into incomes. Last April, this currency was abandoned for a new Gold-backed currency called Zimbabwean Gold (ZiG), which has already also lost nearly half its value.

The monthly salary of nurses, which in 2018 was an equivalent of USD 840, has sunk to less than USD 400 – 240 of which is paid in USD and another USD 150 equivalent in ZiG.

This income, which is “far below the poverty datum line” has “rendered our nurses incapable of sending their children to school, buying clothes, affording food, or even securing transport to work. Many are walking long distances to their workstations, while others are forced to live in overcrowded single-room accommodations with their families due to an inability to pay rent,” complained Dongo.

Up to USD 120 is deducted from the salaries of nurses staying in government accommodation as monthly rent for basic rooms. “Shockingly,” he added, “these deductions are made from the US dollar component of their salaries, not the ZiG portion,” which the Reserve Bank devalued 43% last September only months after introducing it.

Demanding a minimum monthly wage of USD 840, Dongo deemed it “critical” for “alleviating the chronic underpayment and harsh living conditions being endured by our health workers”.

Their working conditions are also harsh. Hospitals have dilapidated due to chronic underfunding under austerity measures which have hollowed out the country’s healthcare system, once hailed as a model for sub-Saharan Africa before neoliberal reforms.

Moved by what he saw when he went to visit a relative at a hospital, Tino Machakaire, Minister of Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training, wrote in a statement addressing President Emmerson Mnangagwa on May 5, “The growing public outcry over our healthcare system is not an exaggeration, it reflects the difficult experiences of many citizens.”

Pleading the president to “find time from your busy schedule to visit these institutions yourself,” he said, “There is no substitution for seeing, listening and understanding firsthand what our citizens are going through.”

The public often blames health workers “for delays and inefficiencies, but how can you perform miracles without even basic resources,” questioned Dongo. “There is a severe lack of medical resources, equipment, and essential drugs.”

The need to constantly improvise with the limited available resources leads “to long queues, slow service delivery, and increased suffering of patients. This also results in heightened exposure” of the nurses “to infections and extreme fatigue”.

To escape such working and living conditions, nurses have been emigrating en masse, especially to the UK, where they are being absorbed into the National Health Service (NHS) under a bilateral agreement. This brain drain has caused chronic staff shortages in Zimbabwe’s hospitals.

This has in turn overburdened the remaining nurses, who, while struggling to make ends meet on poverty wages, work long and irregular hours, with a “nurse-to-patient ratio as high as 1:20 or even 1:30 in some wards. This is unmanageable and endangers both patient care and nurse wellbeing,” warned Dongo.

Instead of addressing the root cause of this brain drain, which is poverty wages, the government is reportedly withholding the academic credentials of 4,000 nurses who have completed their courses to prevent their emigration.

“This is a blatant infringement on their right to choose their employer, and we demand immediate release of these documents to all eligible nurses,” Dongo protested.