Mozambican health professionals have entered day 2 of a nationwide strike over improved working conditions and fair pay.
The Mozambican Nurses Association (OEM) published a letter on International Nurses Day that they were frustrated by persisting issues, including inadequate working conditions and low salaries, leading nurses to reach a breaking point, emphasising their demands for improved resources, fair compensation, and better support from the government.
The backbone of Mozambique’s healthcare system, the nurses have been demanding immediate attention to the substandard working conditions, insufficient staffing, limited resources and inadequate infrastructure that impact their ability to deliver quality care services to patients.
The health professionals on strike comprise nurses, lab technicians, among others.
Comment
One of the sins of the ruling Frelimo party’s successive governments is the insistent proclivity to be tone deaf to labour issues.
Characteristically, calls for dialogue to address their demands went unanswered and Health Minister Armindo Tiago just went about his business as if the health professionals were a mere nuisance flea to be swatted away.
Perhaps, Tiago thinks that the strike will fizzle out as happened in January with the doctors’ strike. Then, it was mostly the nurses who held the health system afloat.
Strategically, the strike was announced in the central city of Beira where adherence is significant. Far from the ministerial manipulations, political blackmail, threats and various pressures, the nurses are taking the strike to another level – Beira has always been known as a hotbed of revolt and dissent.
Maybe, the government should stop making fewer promises in hotel workshops and focus its attention more on the working conditions and wages of professionals in the various public service sectors.
In fact, without them, the promises made cannot be implemented only with government officials smiles and campaign slogans.
Meanwhile, Tiago has just said that he is willing to meet with the strikers. Why did he wait for them to go on a strike to express willingness to enter into a dialogue with them?
As things stand, the strike is impacting negatively on the national health system: there has been a remarked decrease in the system’s ability to provide care for patients; the decrease in the number of nurses has affected and slowed services, causing delays in care provision, as well as the cancellation of medical and surgical procedures.
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