Get the jab or get a new job. That's the message from the government in Zimbabwe.
It's introducing a vaccination mandate for all of its nearly 300,000 public sector workers. The idea
is to force those reluctant to get the jab to finally roll up their sleeves.
Across Africa, there are still not enough people getting vaccinated. Only about five percent of the
African population has so far been double jabbed. That's compared to around 55 percent in Asia,
75 percent in Europe and 65 percent in South America.
A lack of vaccine is slowing the rollout across Africa. But vaccine hesitancy is also posing a
growing challenge. Other African countries are also considering making vaccination mandatory
for their public sector workers. Are mandates like this the best way
to stamp out vaccine hesitancy? Privilege Musvanhiri sent this report from Harare.
Garikai Mahlengwe is a teacher at a public school in the capital Harare. He like many
other civil servants was vaccinated, but only out of the fear of losing his job.
Garikai considers mandatory vaccination for public workers
as discriminatory and a violation of the freedom of choice.
"I feel we have been robbed of our rights by the pandemic. This mandatory vaccination,
if it was mandatory to everyone, should not have selected civil servants.
It seems as if civil servants are the only human beings here and are the
only spearheaders of COVID 19, which is totally wrong."
Despite the call for public workers to be vaccinated, the vaccination rate
has not gone up as expected. There are hardly long queues at
vaccination centers if compared to a few months back when the country was hit by the third wave.
While vaccines maybe readily available at vaccination centers like this one. It is
the citizens’ response that is a bit low. It is a trickle against what health authorities may be
anticipating. Perhaps because of the conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines.
Zimbabwe is targeting vaccinating 60+ per cent of its population, hoping to get close
to herd immunity. That accounts for 10 million out of its 15 million citizens.
The government says mandatory vaccination means just that.
Some individual rights have to be restricted. The government is saying you need to be vaccinated
to protect yourself and those that you serve. Public servants are always working in public
spaces and interacting with the public. We need to make sure that all public servants are vaccinated.
Worker unions have challenged mandatory vaccination in courts but are encouraging
the government to provide vaccines to all citizens willing to take up the jabs.
"It is illogical to force an employee to get vaccinated at the same time
allow the same employee to interact and mingle with a person who is not vaccinated."
For Garikai Mahlengwe, a vaccination card is now the passport to work.
At least he is guaranteed a salary. However, his case is not unique - many
countries across the world are now moving towards COVID passports to access services.