U-TURN: Dr Mwebesa Finally Eats His Own Words; Shelves Directive Firing Striking Intern Doctors

The director general of health services at the Ministry of Health (MoH), Dr Henry Mwebesa, has made a u-turn on his directive firing striking medical interns.

On December 10, Dr Mwebesa communicated the MoH top management’s decision to fire striking medical interns.

But the interns threatened to sue Dr Mwebesa if he didn’t rescind his decision by December 15.

This threat and pressure from the Federation of Ugandan Medical Interns (Fumi), Uganda Medical Association (Uma) and several health activists’ criticism of the decision to fire the students made Dr Mwebesa agree to meet the interns for dialogue.

On December 15, Dr Mwebesa held a meeting with Fumi president Dr Mary Lilian Nabwire and National Organization of Trade Unions (Notu) Chairman General Usher Wilson Owere at the headquarters of MoH at Wandegeya in Kampala.

Nabwire, Owere and Mwebesa agreed that the latter and his colleagues from the health ministry should meet Fumi leaders and a number of medical interns as one way of using dialogue to end the strike.

The director general and other MoH officials are expected to convince the medical interns to suspend their strike and wait for government to process their allowance increment.

While President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni had directed that each interns’ allowance be increased from Shs700,000 to Shs2.5m starting in July 2021.

But the money for the allowances’ enhancement was not included in the budget for the 2021-2022 financial year, prompting a supplementary request.