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Zimbabwe sets up fund to curb brain drain
Business Day (SA)
August 30, 2006

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/world.aspx?ID=BD4A260485

HARARE - The Zimbabwean government has established a 550-million Zimbabwe dollar fund in a bid to stem the exodus of skilled workers in the public sector, a state daily reported today.

The Herald said the money would be used to persuade doctors, nurses and teachers to shun the private sector and remain in the country which is labouring under an economic crisis with inflation running at about 1 000%.

"This fund will be used to pay special allowances to people with special skills. The fund is now with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe," Washington Mbizvo, chairman of the National Economic Development and Retention, was quoted as saying by the daily.

About three-million of Zimbabwe’s 12-million population are believed to have left the country in the last seven years, mostly to SA although many thousands have also moved to the West.

Apart from a shortage of trained staff in the health and education sector, the government is also facing a lack of state attorneys, engineers and architects who have either headed abroad or gone into private practice.

Mbizvo said that 121-million dollars of the package has been set aside to attract newly trained doctors to work in rural areas where the shortage of medical staff is particularly acute.

"We will give them furniture, refrigerators, stoves, television sets and beds as incentives for rural deployment," he said.

Since early July, junior doctors have been on strike demanding a salary hike of more than 700% to counter inflation.

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