Africa-Press – Uganda. The ministries of Health and Finance yesterday held a crisis meeting to resolve issues surrounding the pending deployment and payment of medical interns.
The meeting took place shortly after the Health ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr Diana Atwine, left an earlier engagement with Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The committee had initially in their agenda planned to discuss the Auditor General’s report on the health docket for the financial year ending today. But the subject was dropped after the issue of medical interns came up.
The committee chairperson, Mr Medard Sseggona (Busiro County East), kicked off the discussion after asking Dr Atwine the status of the interns.
And in her response, she said a meeting had been scheduled over the issue of medical interns.
“The issue of interns, it remains unresolved,” Dr Atwine said, adding, “Chair even right now, I was talking to my PA [Personal Assistant] …that we have a meeting with the [Ministry] of Finance to continue discussing and engaging them to see how they can find some money so that we deploy [interns].”
Finance minister Matia Kasaija later confirmed to Monitor that the meeting had indeed taken place but declined to divulge the details.
“Yes, it [meeting] was there..it took place…but we have decided to go to Cabinet first to put our position,” Mr Kasaija said, adding, “but I don’t want to tell you what our position is.”
But by press time, our efforts to get a comment from Dr Atwine on the resolutions of the meeting were futile.
Trainees and doctors have held strikes and protests, asking the government to address their concerns about deployment and payment in recent years.
For instance, pre-intern medical doctors last week marched to Parliament to hand over a petition to the Speaker, Ms Anita Among, protesting their delayed payment.
Ms Among thereafter asked the government to plan for the deployment of the pre-medical interns and clear any pending arrears.
On deployment, Dr Atwine informed the committee that they were doing everything in their power to resolve the crisis.
“Our concern is that the delay to deploy is also going to affect the numbers because we are expecting almost 2,500 to come out very soon and if they join the existing [interns], we will be talking about 4,000 interns and so the earlier we resolve this issue with Ministry of Finance, the better so that our interns are deployed,” she said yesterday.
For the budget, Dr Atwine said the Finance ministry had not released Shs80 billion to address the issues of interns and clear other debts.
Last week, the Health minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, told legislators during a plenary session that her ministry needed Shs80 billion to facilitate the deployment of 1,901 medical interns who are still waiting to undergo training.
Ms Juliet Suubi Kinyamatama (Rakai Woman MP) said: “We passed the budget and planned for the interns…[but] have no explanation from the Finance ministry…We are, therefore, ready to take on Finance at any cost.”
Mr Sseggona said: “If the money is not given by the Finance ministry to resolve the medical interns’ crisis problem, we [will] riot.”
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