Civil Servants, Nurses join Teachers’ Strike.

In Harare it was compounded by a strike by council workers who downed tools on Wednesday.  Nurses and doctors joined the strike set to paralyse operations across the whole country.
The Public Service Association (PSA), which represents all civil servants, said its members were disgruntled and forced to resort to industrial action after having given the Mugabe regime until end of February to review their salaries.
Government sparked a furore after repeating its habit of awarding members of the defence forces and police huge salary hikes and soft loans as a way of buying their loyalty ahead of the elections. Some government departments, including the CIO, did not receive the hikes, prompting further disgruntlement.
PSA president Cecilia Alexander-Khowa said, Our members are failing to make ends meet and yet their counterparts in the army are earning billions. Soldiers are not an essential service during peacetime so we wonder why they are getting special treatment. We cannot rule out industrial action because government employees are very bitter about the discriminatory treatment they are getting from their employer.
The strike by teachers has paralysed operations in schools across the whole country and the pro-government Zimbabwe Teachers Union (ZIMTA) has joined the protest organized by the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ).
ZIMTA executive member, Anderson Moyo said, Our members are failing to commute to work so there is no option but to express our unhappiness through industrial action. We want a salary review at the same proportion as given to members of the army by government recently.
PTUZ secretary general Raymond Majongwe said there was no going back on the strike unless government capitulated on the union’s demand of a minimum of Z$1,7 billion salary for teachers, currently earning around Z$400 million.
Harare council workers downed tools on Wednesday in demand of a 300% salary increment and this paper visited the Town House to establish that negotiations with management were failing to break the impasse and the workers were set to continue on strike in the coming week.