Mozambique: Health workers suspend minimum services, continue strike

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Mozambique: Health workers suspend minimum services, continue strike

8:15 CAT | 13 May 2024

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

Health professionals in Mozambique announced on Monday that they would continue their strike and suspend minimum services in hospitals, given the lack of consensus with the government, which they accuse of “aggravating harassment and threats”.

“We had already said that if attempts to disrupt the right to strike continued, we would take drastic action. In this sense, we have suspended the minimum services throughout the country and the strike continues,” said the Nampula coordinator of the Association of United and Solidarity Health Professionals of Mozambique (APSUSM) at a press conference in the city of Nampula on the strike that began on 29 April.

Lopes Juma Remane explained that during the negotiations in the second week of the strike, the health professionals continued to complain, among other things, about the lack of medical equipment in the health units, definitive frameworks, overtime pay and shift allowances.

“We would like the government to take a stand and assume that the frameworks that specific health professionals have had are provisional and that those in the general regime should also have the 10% risk allowance. We want the frameworks to be definitive for everyone,” he said.

The spokesman added that health professionals “followed with concern” the announcement by the minister of health, Armindo Tiago, who said last week that he had guaranteed most of the demands in the APSUSM’s list, including the framework for more than 60,000 professionals.

“Government fallacies to fool us again (…). The reality is that we are on strike all over the country, the health units are only working with the minimum services,” he said.

The health professionals accuse the government of continuing to place “unqualified students to attend to the people” in the health units, ensuring that this happens without the supervision of an experienced professional.

“We would like to know from the minister of health who is responsible for these students, who will be blamed for any damage that occurs while these unprepared students are providing care,” asked Juma Remane.

APSUSM also accuses the government of worsening the harassment of health professionals to abandon the strike and return to their jobs.

“The harassment has worsened. Professionals are receiving calls from heads of human resources threatening to suspend salaries and open proceedings if they refuse to go to work,” said Remane.

More than 50,000 health professionals joined the strike that began on 29 April, the Association of United and Solidarity Health Professionals of Mozambique announced earlier.

The return to the strike had been scheduled for 28 March, but it was suspended a day earlier following talks with the Mozambican government that culminated in the fulfilment of some points of the demand, such as the training of health professionals, monitoring visits to hospital units and the resolution of irregularities in the payment of allowances, APSUSM said at the time.

Almost 30 days after the suspension of the strike, Mozambican health workers once again complained about the government’s failure to comply and the failure to carry out visits to monitor compliance with the agreements between the parties, saying that the hospitals “are worse off than they were at the start of the dialogue”.

Among other things, APSUSM is demanding that the government provide hospitals with medicines, which in some cases have to be bought by patients, the purchase of hospital beds, a solution to the problem of “lack of food”, as well as equipping ambulances with emergency supplies and non-disposable personal protective equipment, the lack of which is “forcing staff to buy out of their own pockets”.

Source: Lusa