Africa-Press – Uganda. Legislators on the Parliament’s Public Accountability Committee (PAC) have vowed to deny support to the Ministry of Health if the persistent issues regarding the deployment of medical interns are not addressed.
In the vow communicated to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health Dr Diana Atwine by the PAC [Central] committee chairperson Medard Ssegona, the former was tasked to “without fail ensure that the interns’ standoff with government is resolved.”
“To inform you in advance, without resolving that issue of interns, don’t expect any support from Parliament. We are very resolved on the issue of interns because we know their contribution to the health sector,” Ssegona told Dr Atwine.
He added: “We are committed to helping and supporting any efforts towards paying these interns- both payment of arrears as well as the current budget, because those have not been paid and we owe them money since they are now offering service and non-payment will affect them.”
His promise was made after Dr Atwine updated the committee on government’s latest progress towards resolving said the impasse. The committee had invited the Ministry of Health officials to answer queries raised in the Auditor General Report 2021/2022.
Prior to Ssegona’s communication, Dr Atwine had reported to the committee whose proceedings commenced around mid-day, that her team had scheduled to hold high-profile meeting with Ministry of Finance officials to find a lasting solution to the matter.
“Right now as I was talking to my P.A [Personal Assistant], the minister is calling that we have a meeting with Ministry of Finance to continue discussing and engaging them to see how we can find some money so that we deploy our concerns that the delay to deploy is also going to affect the numbers (because) we are also expecting (an additional) about almost 2500 to come out very soon,” Dr Atwine said, adding that “If they join the existing ones, we will be talking about 4000 interns. So the earlier resolve this issue with ministry of finance, the better so that our interns are deployed.”
According to Dr Atwine, the meeting was meant to commence at 1pm but the press-time, this publication had not confirmed whether the said meeting had commenced or not.
The committee’s resolve resonates with Speaker of Parliament Anita Among’s position made late last week in which she pledged that the House would with its powers ensure that a lasting solution to the pains of medical interns in country is found.
On Thursday last week, Speaker Among directed Prime Minister Robbinah Nabbanja to push the responsbible government authorities to implement all previous pledges to settle the demands of the medical interns.
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