Africa-Press – Uganda. The current strike by doctors follows so many similar industrial actions in the last 20 years. This, therefore, means their current demands are not new.
The same situation of ‘Patients stranded as doctors strike (Daily Monitor, November 23) has been recurrent.
Here, just as was before, is that the doctors are demanding that government should raise their pay and improve their working conditions. This includes improving the state of our intensive care units, ensuring uninterrupted supply of medicines, and personal protective equipment to make our doctors work safely and batter.
The above demands by the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) are realistic and seek to make them render “service with honour” as their motto underlines. This is because UMA exists to promote and defend the rights and interests of doctors and safety of patients.
So UMA’s move to negotiate for improved welfare of doctors is within their rights. But the issue is, where does this leave the doctors and the safety of their patients, especially when we are living with the plague of Covid-19, let alone other pressing medical concerns?
This dilemma presents a catch-22 situation for both the government and medical workers. This forces on us a situation in which the doctors’ actions have consequences which make it impossible to pursue their action.
Similarly, our advice to the government is that it should not opt for strong-arm tactics as it did in 2017. We implore government to steer clear of the option of first bullying and ordering about the doctors instead of entering into dialogue as a first step.
As has been proven before, government’s ultimatum to doctors and ordering Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) to police doctors in hospitals was a misjudgment and blunder.
Commendably, govern then made an about turn and chose dialogue.
Similarly, as this strike enters its second day, dialogue and not strong-arm tactics should be President Museveni’s first option, not the second. In this, the President and team should consider as urgent, the risks that our medical practitioners are exposed to while performing their all-essential roles that we need in saving lives, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In sum, our call is that government should move to quickly end the doctors’ strike to save the lives of wananchi. The doctors’ demands for better pay, duty facilitation, improved working condition, better functional facilities and equipment, are realistic.
Similar incremental salaries the medics are demanding have been granted for teachers and lecturers.
What government should do, as a durable redress, is to set up a salary review commission, offset and harmonise the grossly skewed salary disparities among executives and lower cadres across ministries, departments, and agencies.
Only then can a durable solution be worked out to end the current doctors strike and future clamour of fair wages.
[email protected]
For More News And Analysis About Uganda Follow Africa-Press
