By MacDonald Dzirutwe

HARARE, June 1 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's junior state doctors officially went on strike on Friday to press President Robert Mugabe's government to pay better wages they say have been eroded by the country's economic crisis.

The strike, the second in six months, is set to further cripple the country's health sector, especially major state hospitals which care for the majority of urban residents.

"It's now in full swing, even general hands have joined in the strike," Amon Siveregi, head of Hospital Doctors Association, told Reuters.

Doctors are disgruntled over low pay in a country suffering from the highest inflation rate in the world and a crippling HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Siveregi said doctors were demanding a one-off payment of $3,000 in U.S. dollars for vehicle loans and for their monthly salary to be raised to Z$70 million, which is $280,000 at the official exchange rate but fetches just $1,300 on the parallel black market, reflecting the local unit's collapse in value.

The doctors are currently earning Z$2.4 million a month, including allowances, and now want their salaries regularly reviewed as a bulwark against inflation.

Inflation, now riding at more than 3,700 percent, has wrecked havoc with workers' incomes, with urban residents the worst hit by a severe economic crisis that has left four out of five people without jobs.

Already, most nurses at state hospitals have not been turning up for work arguing that their salaries were not enough to cover escalating transport costs.

At Harare Hospital, the country's second largest referral centre, student nurses were attending only to critical patients. In a corner, a few doctors were chatting about the strike.

"Our demands have always remained the same, that we are paid a living wage in recognition of the important work we do," a junior doctor, who declined to be identified, said.

Hospital officials at Parirenyatwa, Zimbabwe's largest hospital, were turning away patients they deemed not to be in need of emergency treatment.

The majority of Zimbabweans however still live in rural areas and depend on mission hospitals and smaller municipal and private hospitals and clinics, which are still open.

But private hospitals are more expensive, forcing people to go to clinics which are not adequately stocked with drugs.

A severe foreign currency shortage has seen hospitals running without basic drugs and has hit a government programme to increase anti-retroviral drugs to patients living with HIV/AIDS, which kills about 3,000 people every week.

(Additional reporting by Nelson Banya)

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