Doctors petition Kadaga on salary

Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga addresses doctors who presented the petition on Wednesday. Photo by Eric Dominic Bukenya

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Speaker Rebecca Kadaga said Parliament appreciates the plight of health workers and the problems in the health sector and promised to have them addressed

PARLIAMENT. The Uganda Medical Association on Wednesday petitioned the Speaker of Parliament decrying poor working conditions and asked the institution to help pass a series of allowances for health practitioners.
Presenting the petition on behalf of the medical workers, Dr Fred Biiso, their president, said the allowance will help instil morale and also improve service delivery.
Further justifying the request for allowance, Dr Biiso, who singled out human resource as the biggest challenge facing Uganda’s health sector, said although Uganda may not have the capacity to address all the push factors that cause doctors to fly and work in foreign countries, it can handle some like allowances.

“Our health workers are not motivated. They are overworked and most times burn out. This translates into poor quality service and the person who bears the brunt of poor quality service is the consumer, the ordinary Ugandan.
“Kindly facilitate us so that we can render the service the ordinary Ugandan badly needs. These patriotic Ugandans have sacrificed opportunities to work outside Uganda but they have decided to serve the motherland,” he said.

Call allowance
“That allowance I get because I have to stay on standby when I am off duty but I shouldn’t go to a party or to my garden because anytime I will be required to be called to hospital,” Dr Biiso said. “A doctor who is put in such a situation should be given an allowance so that as he sits waiting, he doesn’t have any worries in his head.”

Over time allowance.
“For us working beyond normal working hours like any other public servant. If I am being overworked but I know there is my allowance, I wouldn’t mind,” he said.

And housing allowance.
“We want an allowance which will enable the doctors to stay near the place of work. Our prayer is that the House appreciates the need and allow these allowances to be given so that the health workers comfortably serve Ugandans,” he said.
The health sector has for long been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons from medicines being stolen to patients visiting hospitals and not finding health workers, let alone medicine.

Early this year, Uganda’s only cancer machine broke down attracting public fury towards the Ministry of Health.
Contextualising the problem, Dr Biiso explained that because of lack of best trained professionals serving the sector, leaders in the sector delegate junior officials who most times misuse resources and are bad in handling patients.

“The treatment you get when you go to a health facility managed by juniors may not be the best. Our objective is to improve our productivity and help government minimise losses that result from inefficient and poor use of equipment,” he said.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga said Parliament appreciates the plight of health workers and the problems in the health sector and promised to have them addressed.
She questioned the logic of retiring doctors at 60 years yet the country badly needs their services. She blamed it on “a mismatch in government planning.”