By Fred Turyakira

About 150 medical workers at Mbarara regional referral Hospital on Monday laid down their tools protesting nonpayment of their salaries and the deduction of money on their accounts by the public service.

The strike crippled services at the Hospital and the out patients who turned up for treatment were stranded in the Hospital  compound  with no help from the  striking medical workers  sitting in the same compound holding placards demanding for payments.

However, some patients supported the striking medical workers and accused the government of neglecting the health workers paying them peanuts.

Intern student medics from Mbarara University took charge of the admitted patients as Dr. George Upenytho, held a crisis meeting with other administrators to address the issue.  

Justus Musiime, the Mbarara branch Uganda medical workers association secretary, said medics have issues with the public service for deducting money on their bank accounts and nonpayment of salaries between May and October.

He said the Public service started deducting money from workers’ accounts in September to recover the money they claim to have erroneously over paid to workers in the month of May.

“Medical workers found extra money on their accounts and thought it was payments for the previous months which were not paid. We could not establish the source of the money because we stopped receiving pay slips since January 2012.
Therefore we cannot know how much has been deposited or not,” he explained.

The affected medical workers include, Nurses, medical doctors, paramedics and support staff among others.