RECENTLY, South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported that Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health and Child Care (MoHCC), who is also the Vice President, Constantino Chiwenga had announced that hiring health workers from Zimbabwe was now illegal.
The SABC reported on April 3, 2023 that “Zimbabwe’s Health Minister Constantino Chiwenga says government plans to enact law which will criminalize recruitment of health personnel from Zimbabwe by other foreign countries. #sabcnews.”
Did the minister say it’s illegal to hire healthcare workers from Zimbabwe?
Background
The Vice President said this while officiating at the launch of the National Plan of Action against Trafficking of persons in Harare, at the HICC.
So what did the Vice President Say?
Find below the snippet from the VP’s speech and a full audio at the end from his address at the human trafficking event.
Snippet: From 00:6:05 of the audio
“Following our country’s ratification for the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, there was an urgent need for Zimbabwe to have a National Criminalizing of the act of human trafficking. Without such as law, Zimbabwe would have been caught under economic pressure by the Financial Action Task-force (FAT) for the lack of compliance to a system we subscribe to.
“What the country then did in order to comply with the Financial Action Task force recommendations and to give temporal legal effect to Zimbabwe’s obligations under the Parochial protocol, the late President, Cde Robert Gabrielle Mugabe evoked the Presidential powers temporal measures and gazetted a temporal law and Presidential Powers Temporal Measures Trafficking in Persons Act regulations which was valid only until July, 2 2014.
“Thereafter, the Trafficking in Persons Act Chapter 9.25 which is Zimbabwe’s first permanent registration on the subject of trafficking in persons was enacted on the 13th of June 2014. The Affirmation Act provides for the prohibition, prevention and prosecution for the crime of trafficking and persons and protection of victims of trafficking.
“It provides for the legal framework to address the country’s response to the challenge of trafficking in persons. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a shared understanding globally that trafficking in persons refers to the recruitment, transportation, and transfer, harbouring or receiving or persons. This could be by means of trade or use of force or other forms of cohesion or abduction, of fraud, of deception, of abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability of the person for the purpose of exploitation.
“The giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person or control over other persons for the purpose of exploitation also constitute trafficking in persons. It has been noted that our Law’s definition for the crime of trafficking in persons need to be reviewed to make it consistent with current best international standards. Efforts are therefore being made to amend the definition such that it includes all elements crime namely the act itself, the means and purpose. I was also saying to the honorable minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage that we must also address the blatant White Collar Crime by people will be masquerading as recruiting professionals.
“If one deliberately recruits and makes the country suffer because it lacks the required professionals. That’s a crime against humanity. If people die in hospitals because there are no nurses and doctors and somebody has been so irresponsible of not training their own nationals but wanting poor countries to train for them, it’s a crime. That must be taken seriously.”
AUDIO: VP Chiwenga Audio
