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Paidamoyo Chipunza Health Reporter
About 40 000 employees in the health sector are not happy with the salary negotiations concluded between Government and civil servants last month because they were excluded from the process, leaving their grievances unresolved. In an interview recently, health bipartite negotiating panel team leader Mrs Regina Smith said they made presentations to their employer, the Health Services Board, well before the National Budget in October last year and before the Apex Council met with the Civil Service Commission (CSC) over salary issues.

Mrs Smith said they expected to be called to discuss their proposals but this never happened. She said they were only called after negations to endorse what had been agreed by other civil servants.

“Health workers presented their position paper while the National Joint Council was still having squabbles over representatives but we are surprised that they were given preference, literary ignoring the health sector,” said Mrs Smith.

She said in the agreed figures, there was no mention of health specific allowances, which were stopped in 2009 — again without any consultation.These include medical allowances for health professionals and health-factor (designed specifically for other health workers) and post-basic allowances, which recognise specialty areas.

Ms Smith bemoaned the plethora of problems facing the health sector, which she attributed to lack of commitment by the Government.“The staffing levels do not reflect the new disease trends and Government continues to allocate a miserly budget to health,” she said.

Health Services Board chief executive Mrs Ruth Kaseke said concerns raised by the workers were genuine and that the HSB had since engaged the Ministry of Health and Child Care on the issue.

“Treasury usually releases an envelope to both PSC and HSB which forms the basis of our negotiations, but this time that was not done,” said Mrs Kaseke. “We did not get any communication from Treasury so we did not have a framework to negotiate from,” she said.
Mrs Kaseke said HSB was in the process of engaging Government on the issue.

Under the agreed salary structure, those in grade D1 such as teachers straight out of college will get $500, up from US$446 while those in  E1 such as deputy directors, will get US$623.

Health workers fall in the same grades.