Zimbabwean police arrested more than a dozen nurses and union representatives protesting on Monday outside a hospital in the capital Harare to demand wage increases, the country's largest nurses' union said.
The protests come as the southern African country faces its worst economic crisis in more than a decade and its beleaguered health system battles a surge in coronavirus cases.
"They are in police cells as we speak but we don't know what charges they are facing," he said, adding that the union was told the arrested would appear in court on Tuesday. At the protest held by scores of nurses on Monday, the healthcare workers bemoaned the effects a low salary has on their quality of life.He said an average nurse's salary had eroded from US$800 in 2008 to the equivalent of US$35 currently."We have become a danger to the patients we are supposed to look after."
Zimbabwe's nurses held a strike in March protesting the government's failure to provide personal protective equipment for those on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle.
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