Brain drain: Panicky Chiwenga blames West

By The Standard and Newsday | Jan. 17, 2022 | 2 Min read

Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, who is also Health and Child Care minister, on Saturday presented a report to the Zanu PF politburo which stated that there was growing concern over the brain drain.

BY MOSES MATENGA

THE ruling Zanu PF party, which is panicking over the mass exodus of government workers who are leaving for Europe in search of greener pastures, chose to blame the West for failing to train its own people and were relying on “highly trained locals”.

Thousands of government workers, mainly in the healthcare, education and tourism sectors have relocated to foreign countries because of low remuneration and poor working conditions.

Those that have remained behind, particularly doctors, nurses and teachers are demanding to be paid United States dollar salaries.

“The Vice-President also talked about the brain drain in the medical sector which again is being caused by the Western countries who do not train their people,” Zanu PF party spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa said at a Press conference on Saturday.

“When a crisis comes, they also have an aging population, they come to recruit from Zimbabwe and because we are relatively poorer than them — because we were colonised and enslaved, we are not as rich as they are.

“We train the best people, they come and snatch them and never want to compensate us for those people who we invest in so much through training, but they are now lured by better salaries because they have been neglectful to train their own personnel. So, we are always at the receiving end of these people who want to lecture us about democracy and human rights, and all this.”

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He said Cabinet was seized with how the issue of brain drain could be addressed.

Mutsvangwa said Zimbabwe would rather keep its relationship with China instead of pushing to normalise affairs with the United States, adding that at least the Sino-Zim relationship was “material”.

“We value this relationship and it has always been beneficial to us. China has been handy in that regard (health sector) and in investment.

“What we have been trying to highlight to you is that China is an all-weather friend. We were not invited to the democratic sort of fiesta of the Americans in Washington, somehow because we created democracy which they denied.

“We cannot eat the democracy of the Americans, but we definitely can benefit from the medical vaccines of the Chinese and save lives. One relationship is very material, the other one is abstract and we would rather concentrate on the material one,” Mutsvangwa said.