The Mozambique Medical Association (AMM) announced this Monday that it would resume its strike on July 29, describing the situation in the National Health Service as “chaotic” and accusing the government of lacking interest in resolving the class’s problems.
“Health workers will again paralyse their activity from Monday, July 29, throughout the country,” AMM President Napoleão Viola said at a press conference in Maputo, adding that the strike would last 21 days and could be extended if there was no agreement with the Government.
The list of demands includes improvement of the framework within the Unified Tariff Plan (UTP), reduction of wages by class, absence of overtime pay for work “more than a year” and improvement of working conditions.
“Our health facilities continue to lack the most basic necessities. We continue to operate without medicines, without enough food for patients, and without diagnostic tools to access the pathologies affecting patients,” Viola said.
The AMM president said only six of the 23 points on the list of demands had been resolved since talks with the government began last August, adding that there had been no dialogue for at least five months.
“What we are seeing is the continued degradation of our NHS. Everyone has seen the plastering situation. [falta de material para intervenções] “This was reported at the Central Hospital of Nampula, but it is happening all over the country, including at the Central Hospital of Maputo,” Viola stressed.
“This is the situation [a greve] which we would not like to achieve, but unfortunately there is no dialogue to find solutions (…) This is a strike to show the government that we are unhappy,” insisted the president of the doctors’ association, repeating that there is a lack of “concrete answers” to class demands.
Viola said doctors would not back down from their complaints and asked for public support to “put pressure” on the government, arguing that “doctors are tired” of an NHS that is “lacking basic resources”.
“It’s chaos, that’s the right word to describe it, because we’re not sure that what we do will bring solutions to the patient in front of us,” he concluded, thus justifying the return of doctors to strikes, just like a year ago.