Are Nurses On Strike?

By Gale Ngakane
Correspondent | Monday June 16, 2008 00:00

 

At the hospital, it was business as usual as queuing patients were being helped at the outpatients department. Surreptitious inquiries about work-related stoppages elicited a shrug of the shoulders and nothing else. A hospital orderly in a khaki uniform said she only heard about a strike by nurses in Molepolole. 'Here in Francistown, there is nothing like that. As you can see, people are busy working,' she said. But the rumours took a different twist when a teacher at Selolwe Junior Secondary School in Francistown, Onkabetse Mompati walked into Monitor offices and said that nurses at the clinics run by local government are on strike. 

To buttress his story, Mompati, a trade unionist said he was given a nasty shock when he took his 11-year-old son, who had dislocated his ankle while playing football, to Ntshe Clinic. He said he queued with about 15 other people including a pregnant woman waiting to be assisted. He said that after a while when it appeared there was no nurse in sight, he decided to enter one of the consulting rooms to find out what was going on.

'There was a nurse in full uniform and she told me that if my child needed help, I can go to Jubilee Clinic where there is a doctor who can help me. The nurse told me that it was none of their business that my child was injured and required medical assistance,' alleged a fuming Mompati.

He concluded that the nurses were on strike when they told him that they can only do what is expected of them; they were not dispensing medicine nor bandaging broken limbs or any other duty that he knew was required of them. 'After I had told the other people waiting in the queue what I had been told by the nurses, we all filed out. I took my son to a private clinic were he received prompt attention.

As a unionist, I understand their actions. It is just that it was a waste of my time as I had requested permission from school to go to the clinic,' he said.

The nurse in charge of Ntshe Clinic initially told Monitor in a telephone interview that there was no strike at the clinic and that at the time of the call (after 3pm), it was business as usual. 'There was never a strike here. Even now we are still helping people. They are sitting on the benches,' she said.  But she soon changed her tune to say we should talk to her bosses, as she did not have the mandate to speak to the media. Her bosses at the Francistown City Council could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press. Meanwhile, the Botswana Land Boards and Local Authorities Workers' Union (BLLAWU) secretary general, Moshe Noga said nurses at the clinics are now dispensing their services in line with their job description. They no longer dispense medicine as that is the job of pharmacists. They no longer take blood samples from patients, as there are people who are supposed to do that and they also do not register incoming patients, Noga explained

Nurses, together with doctors, police and soldiers are not supposed to go on strike as they are deemed to provide essential services.