Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. The government, through the Health Service Board (HSB), has advised healthcare workers of its intentions to remove their unclaimable night duty allowances.
The move is likely to further dampen morale among healthcare workers as it comes less than 5 months after the government scrapped the flexi hours regime and ordered them to revert to normal working hours.
Responding to the Apex Panel’s request, the HSB Executive Director, Ruth Kaseke said the changes were effective 1 April 2021. Wrote Kaseke:
It is noted that at the Health Sector Bipartite Negotiating Platform meeting of April 7 2020, Apex Panel requested for review of Health Sector-Specific Allowances.
Please be advised that treasury has affirmed its position, as communicated to the board in letters dated 7 January 2020 and March 2, 2020, and as communicated in previous Bipartite meetings, that the review of health sector-specific allowances will ideally take subject to changing the payment framework for the allowances from non-claimable to claimable.
You may note however that treasury acknowledged that only nurse managers and special health allowances may remain non-claimable due to the nature of allowances.
It is in this regard that Oncall, Nigh-Duty and Standby/Callout Allowances have to be claimed on a monthly basis after review.
