VICE-PRESIDENT Constantino Chiwenga, who doubles as Health minister, has called for stiffer penalties on human traffickers, saying they are committing serious crimes against humanity.
Officiating at the launch of the Zimbabwe Trafficking in Persons National Plan of Action (2023-28) in Harare this week, the VP said: “Zimbabwe frowns at this heinous crime which is also a grave violation of human rights. This crime strips an individual of all their dignity, their self-worth and their confidence.”
He also expressed concern that “people are dying in hospitals because there are no nurses and doctors”, while human trafficking criminals are luring away the country’s professionals and trafficking them abroad.
While we understand the VP’s anger over this matter, we would like to kindly also remind him that to protect the country’s citizens, especially professionals like doctors, nurses and teachers from being exposed to human trafficking criminal gangs, government must seriously relook at the welfare of these people and their conditions of service.
As it is at the moment, many of these professionals are risking being trafficked by criminals simply because the country is failing to give them the chance to look after their families due to the poor salaries they are earning.
Over and above the poor wages, the professionals are working under very difficult conditions, which is making their jobs even more stressful.
Doctors and nurses in public hospitals and clinics, which cater for the majority of the country’s citizens, have to make do with obsolete equipment and improvise because there are no such basics as bandages and painkillers.
It is undoubtedly emotionally and physically draining for the health professionals to watch patients suffer because they cannot help them due to unavailability of drugs and equipment.
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The other day, we heard that the country only has one privately-owned cancer machine and all other such machines were lying idle and gathering dust at government hospitals, while thousands of citizens in need of the service are dying every year of cancer-related diseases.
The main point here being, if Zimbabwe’s health delivery system was up to scratch, our professionals would not be risking falling into the hands of human traffickers, hence our appeal to Chiwenga and his government to urgently do something about our health sector whose condition is more than dire.
In fact, if it were a patient, the country’s health delivery system would be in intensive care, surviving on a makeshift life support system whose days are numbered.
We, therefore, implore the VP, in his capacity as the Health minister, to demand that the health sector be adequately resourced immediately and its personnel paid decent wages that motivate them to serve the nation.
The World Health Organisation rightly placed Zimbabwe on the red list to protect it from further haemorrhaging the health sector, but stopping other nations from acquiring our doctors and nurses without doing anything about their situation will not solve the crisis facing the country, and human traffickers will keep making forays into the country scouting for victims.
