Zimbabwean nurses call off strike

HARARE, April, 22 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's public hospital nurses have called off their one-week strike to pave way for negotiations after some of them were fired by the government.

The state-run Sunday Mail newspaper on Sunday quoted the nurses association as urging its members to return to work on Monday as the "collective job action has been highly politicized".

The association said it had not been able to negotiate with its employer after the dismissals.

"It is highly regrettable that our cause of collective job action has been highly politicized. This has portrayed us in bad light," the Zimbabwe Nurses Association said in a statement.

The Zimbabwean government on April 17 fired all striking nurses at government hospitals, two days after the strike, saying the nurses had refused to accept its 17-millon-dollar offer to improve their pay.

The government also said the strike was politically motivated. It ordered the Health Services Board to recruit unemployed trained nurses as well as retired nurses below the age of 70 to replace those fired.

The nurses were demanding better pay and improved working conditions.

The Sunday Mail said contrary to reports that 16,000 nurses had been summarily dismissed by government after the strike, only 5,093 or 30 percent of the entire nursing workforce had been identified for dismissal.

The paper quoted health minister David Parirenyatwa as saying that normalcy had been restored in all government hospitals and recruitment in all provinces was underway.

The strike by the nurses came after a month-long strike by the doctors last month. Enditem