Mozambique: Health minister asks doctors to suspend the strike

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Mozambique: Health minister asks doctors to suspend the strike

12:30 CAT | 13 Jul 2023

Photo: O País

The Mozambican Minister of Health on Wednesday asked doctors to interrupt the 21-day strike that started on Monday, saying that “priority must be given to the life and health of the population”.

“We are here to appeal to the medical association to consider the possibility of interrupting the strike,” Armindo Tiago told a press conference at the Ministry of Health in Maputo.

The Medical Association of Mozambique (AMM) is on the third day of its strike in protest against wage cuts and lack of payment for overtime.

Minister Tiago reiterated the interest of the health sector in maintaining dialogue with professionals, noting that doctors and the government had the same mission: “To guarantee better health care to the population”.

“Regardless of the differences we may have in the health sector, primacy must be given to life and health and any other elements must be secondary,” the minister stressed.

Regarding the change of negotiating teams in the dialogue, one of the doctors’ demands, the health minister said that the team could be changed, depending on the circumstances, but the important thing was to maintain the “institutional memory”.

“What is intended in the negotiation is the maintenance of the institutional memory, and this is guaranteed,” he stressed.

The minister said that some of the points of the doctors’ claims, related to salary, framing in the new civil service single salary table (TSU) and overtime, had been being resolved since June.

Armindo Tiago acknowledged delays in paying overtime to doctors, reiterating that debts prior to 2020 would be paid this month and those for 2022 and 2023 from August.

According to the Minister of Health, there are a total of 44 doctors who have seen salary reductions following the implementation of the new single salary table. Of these, 16 have had their salary situation regularised since June, and the remaining 28 would be paid this month.

This is the second doctors’ strike in less than a year, after the suspension of another strike, called in December over the absence of results from the understandings established in negotiations with the government at the end of last year.

In addition to the doctors, the Association of United and Solidary Health Professionals of Mozambique was also on strike last month in opposition to the application of the new single salary table (TSU), having given the government a period of 60 days to resolve at least part of their claims.

The implementation of the new civil service salary scale is being strongly contested by various professional classes, among them doctors, judges and teachers.

Source: Lusa