Back to Index

Government waives retirement age limit
Caiphas Chimhete, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
July 30, 2006 

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=11&id=4371

THE government has waived the retirement age limit for all health practitioners in a bid keep the health sector functional, a senior government official has said.

The chairman of the Health Services Board (HSB), Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa, said the 60 years’ retirement age limit for health workers had been set aside due to a critical shortage of staff.

Speaking during the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) annual general meeting recently, Mbengeranwa said health practitioners could now continue working "as long as their bodies allow them".

"There is no longer such a thing as retirement age. They can continue as long as they are still fit because most of the health personnel who are retiring here are now actively working in countries such as the UK and South Africa," said Mbengeranwa.

Those that are too old can be assigned less demanding jobs, he said.

Doctors, pharmacists and nurses are leaving the country to work in Botswana, UK, Canada, South Africa and the US, resulting in the deterioration of the provision of health services in the country. Most of them cannot afford decent accommodation or vehicles due to poor salaries.

"The time we graduated from the university, a doctor would get a car the same day he was capped. Car dealers would haunt you so that you would buy their cars but this is no more," Mbengeranwa said.

He said the HSB was working on modalities to address the issues of poor salaries, allowances and working conditions in an effort to retain health workers in the country.

"The setting up of the Health Services Board will no doubt go a long way to address the issue of the health workers’ conditions of service which will ultimately halt the brain drain," Mbengeranwa said.

Speaking at the same meeting, the director of policy and planning in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Simon Chihanga, said the government had set up "a desk" in the ministry to promote community participation in the provision of health.

"We are finalising the modalities but the desk will be up and running in the next few months. The desk will spearhead community participation in health matters and thus promoting health outreach programmes," Chihanga said.

He said the desk would resuscitate the community health structures that were established by government in the 1980s in an effort to promote primary health care.

In the early 80s, there were about 9 000 community health workers that formed the backbone of the country’s health outreach programme. However, only about 500 village health workers are left.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP