GABORONE - About 300 medical staff forced the closure yesterday of Botswana's biggest hospital by walking off their jobs in retaliation to the sacking of hundreds of colleagues who joined a strike.

The government this week fired doctors, nurses, pharmacists and cleaners, who were employed in public hospitals and clinics, after they joined a month-old strike by public workers in defiance of a court order.

Odirile Bakae, a doctor at Princess Marina Hospital, said: "Our slogan is an injury to one is an injury to all.

"Since the government has decided to fire our colleagues, we have also decided to join the strike and mobilise other health personnel to do the same so that hospitals are left with no doctor or nurse.

"We have started a war that we must win and by Friday (today) we will make sure that no service is provided in health facilities."

Doctors from hospitals in other parts of the country have also walked off their jobs in a campaign threatening to hobble healthcare in a nation where one in four adults has HIV.

Civil servants, who have not had a raise in three years, are demanding a 16percent increase.

In the latest negotiations the government lowered its offer from 5 to 3percent from September, saying it had no money.

Unions quickly rejected the government's offer.

"We don't know why they have gone down from 5 to 3percent and we don't care, because all we want is our 16percent," said Goretetse Kekgonegile, spokesperson for the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions.

Government was not immediately reachable for comment.

Botswana is the world's biggest diamond producer, and was hard hit by the global economic crisis that resulted in a sharp decline of sales.

Government employees complain their buying power is shrinking in the face of inflation that hit 8,5percent in March.