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.
