Nurses at Sally Mugabe Central Hospital (formerly Harare Central Hospital) say they are continually being harassed by the hospital’s management for participating in last year’s protests over the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
Some nurses including some top executives and members of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) have resigned following the alleged victimisation.
ZINA president, Mr Enoch Dongo, has since resigned from Sally Mugabe Hospital and Mr Samson Gurupira, the organizing secretary at Sally Mugabe Hospital, have also resigned from the institution.
Speaking to Health Times, Gurupira said he resigned early this year after being subjected to harassment. He added that the resignation was a way of preventing the situation from deteriorating further. He said:
The conditions that was created by my superiors had become so unbearable. I was arrested last year in June and spent a night in the police cells for allegedly leading a demonstration against poor salaries and wages, and lack of personal protective equipment. This arrest was caused by my employer. I was served with three different charges and a suspension letter.
Gurupira said he tried to engage authorities hoping to find an amicable way to resolve the issue but “things only got worse.”
Sally Mugabe Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr Christopher Pasi dismissed the alleged victimisation reports as untrue.
He said every profession has a code of ethics and the nurses defied theirs by speaking to the media when they were not authorised to do so.
Pasi added that their remarks were untrue and when they were asked to substantiate their claims, they could not do that. He added:
There was one of them who came out in the press and it went viral all the world. She came out saying the National Reference Laboratory at the Sally Mugabe was falsifying COVID-19 results.
He said the claims were detrimental to the institution but the nurse failed to substantiate her claims.
He described the nurses’ actions as “just insubordination,” adding that they just don’t want to be asked to account for their actions.
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