HARARE – The Health Services Board (HSB) is initiating moves to dismiss nurses who have defied a directive to scrap the flexi working hours, the information minister said on Tuesday.
Monica Mutsvangwa said the government was deploying army nurses to hospitals and checking attendance registers to isolate nurses who continue to defy the order to return to normal working hours.
The government and nurses reached the flexi-hours compromise last year to avoid a full-blown strike over poor pay. Under the arrangement, nurses were working short days and having some days off work, with most averaging about two days at work.
The HSB last week unilaterally cancelled the flexi-hours following a Cabinet decision, and over a thousand nurses have now been sent letters summoning them to disciplinary hearings for defying the directive.
“Cabinet resolved to cancel the flexi hours arrangement and that nurses who fail to report for duty be subjected to disciplinary processes, that daily attendance registers for nurses be submitted to the HSB and the Ministry of Health and Child Care head office,” Mutsvangwa told journalists following a cabinet meeting in Harare.
She said 1,280 nurses “failed to heed to the call to return to normal working hours” and were now facing disciplinary action. The affected nurses are all believed to be members of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association, which rejected the unilateral directive by the government.
Health minister Constantino Chiwenga, who is also the vice president, has ordered a restructuring of nursing services which would see a mix of contract workers, permanent nursing staff and nurses seconded from the military.
