The implementation of the Single Wage Table (TSU) continues to generate disappointment within the civil service workers, since the amounts were drastically reduced, going against the law principle on the salary irreducibility. In other words, the new amounts approved in the last session of the Council of Ministers (the cabinet), through Decree 53/2022, of 14 October, reduce the salaries of the workers in the order of “10 thousand meticais (155.56 dollars at the current exchange rate)”, according to several witnesses who received their salaries in the month of January.
These amounts are practically the same salaries that were already being paid before the approval of the TSU.
The doctors’ class, who even went as far as to paralyze their activities demanding better working conditions and better salary perspectives, is even more shocked with the incongruities that emerge in the scope of the implementation of the TSU.
Even before the approval of the amounts presented in the TSU, doctors were already bored. With the situation, the discontentment has worsened and there are currently negotiations between this professional group and the Government, in order to seek a solution.
In an interview granted to the Citizen Observatory for Health (OCS), the president of the Medical Association of Mozambique (AMM), Milton Tatia, explained that the concerns that led the class to the demonstration and paralyzing of activities were not observed in this new update of the TSU.
According to Tatia, doctors’ salaries, like those of all public servants, have been reduced and it can be compared to what they were earning in the previous salary scale.
“This situation causes dissatisfaction in the group, so a negotiation is underway with the Government, with a view to reversing this scenario and ensuring that doctors earn decent salaries, which allow them to have a life within acceptable levels for the profession they practice”, she said.
“I think that work is being done, but we have a meeting scheduled for the 16th of February, where we will analyze the situation again and take the decision that is deemed viable”, he added.
New Measures About Strike Depend on 16 February Negotiations
Questioned about the possibility of resuming the strike, the president assured that everything depends on the negotiations that are already underway. It depends on the discussions scheduled for the 16th of the current month; new measures will be taken.
“We only suspended the strike given and considering the holiday period [festive season] and also due to the fact that the Government team has requested a break to work on our demands”, the source stressed, adding that “but if the 16th comes and we don’t see anything concrete, the possibility of resuming the paralysis of activities is greater.”
The Economic and Social Plan and State Budget (PESOE-2023) provides for the current year the hiring of 741 foreign doctors as compared to 158 national professionals.
This situation, according to the AMM representative, is absurd, given that foreign doctors carry more financial costs when compared to national ones.
“The Medical Association of Mozambique does not agree with the hiring of more foreign doctors for the following reasons: we still have many unemployed professionals that the State cannot absorb. We have many colleagues without jobs because the Executive can’t hire them”, he stressed, adding that “a foreign doctor costs twice as much as a Mozambican doctor, so for us this idea of the Government makes no sense at all”, he explained.
For Tatia, it is even more incomprehensible that the Government is always claiming the lack of money to remunerate national professionals decently, “but wants to hire more than 700 foreign doctors.”