NEARLY 1,000 health workers have been effectively sacked in Swaziland with more expected to face the axe, the country’s communists warned over the weekend.

Many of those targeted are those who joined protests demanding their rights and standing up for patient care, the Communist Party of Swaziland claimed. 

The health sector is one of those that has been hit most severely by a public-sector pay freeze imposed by the government of autocratic monarch King Mswati III. 

Health workers are employed on short-term contracts, the latest of which expired on March 31. 

Many of those on full-time contracts said they were refusing to work until their colleagues were granted the same employment rights. 

Emergency meetings were held with hospital managers on Thursday to discuss the impending crisis. 

But the CPS said the Mswati regime is incapable of resolving the health question in Swaziland. 

“The public health sector is getting worse as the regime continues to prioritise the royal family while the public is thrown into further impoverishment,” it said in a statement. 

The party called for “maximum unity among workers” to fight for their rights, including the democratisation of Swaziland.