Striking Nurses, Midwives return to work after threats from Public Service Minister

Nurses and Midvives have called off their industrial action and resumed work today.

According to Daily Monitor Newspaper, the president of Uganda Nurses and Midwives Union (UNMU), Justus Cherop Kiplagat ordered all the members to resume work on Monday as a way of easing the crisis in hospitals that had been caused by the linked strikes by health workers over low pay.

Mr Cherop’s move follows a directive from the Minister of Public Service Wilson Muruli Mukasa ordering nurses and midwives to return to work on Monday 30th May 2022 or risk losing their jobs.

“In this regard, the government is calling upon all allied professional health workers, nurses and midwives to report to duty by Monday, 30, May 2022. By failing to do so, they will be considered as having abandoned duty and resigned accordingly, “Minister Mukasa threateningly said last Friday.

Sources say, the Minister’s directive caused a lot of panic among some members of UNMU thus prompting the Union’s leadership to call off the strike.

Mr. Cherop confirmed to the local daily that indeed they called off the strike since some nurses and midwives had put him under pressure to do so even without getting any commitment from  government.

However, a section of nurses and midwives have accused Mr Cherop of betraying them since he took the decision without consulting them.

“The Ministry of Public Service met with the UNMU committee and agreed to release the revised salary structure on June 16. So Mr Cherop was like we should suspend the strike until June 16 but other members are not in agreement,” the source said.

Meanwhile, The Allied Health Professionals have been on strike since May 16 accusing the government of failing to comply with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) of 2017 to have their pay increased. In the said agreement, the leaders of the striking health workers said the government had agreed that each month, diploma health workers should get Shs3 million, certificate holders should bag Shs1.3 million and degree holders should be paid Shs4.8m.

However, in the recently released salary structure, the government only enhanced the salary of doctors to the level they had agreed on in the CBA.