KAMAPAL-UGANDA/NEWSDAY: Laboratory technicians under their umbrella body, Uganda Medical Laboratory Technology Association (UMLTA) have too laid down tools starting today Tuesday.
The laboratory technicians have now officially joined doctors and medical interns who are also on strike over various grievances including low salaries, poor working conditions among others.
Addressing the media on Monday, Patrick Dennis Alibu, UMLTA secretary-general said they had put the ministry of Public Service on notice over their intended strike three weeks ago, but they didn’t get feedback prompting them to lay down tools.
“A month ago like I told you, we wrote a letter on 29th November 2021 requesting government and it was directly addressed to the honourable minister of Public Service and copies were given to the ministry of Health. We wrote to them requesting government to pay attention to our grievances. While the interns’ strike was going on, we were told they held in house meetings but they did not get back to us as ministry of Public Service with whom we had directed the letter to. And if such a state of handling issues is taken that way, what do you expect? That is why we have come up,” said Alibu.
The laboratory professionals told the media that their efforts to serve in the health sector haven’t been recognized by government, that even as many of them have advanced in their studies to attain degrees and PhDs, government still gives them a paltry salary of Shs 1.2 million.
Alibu says this money is the same as earned by diploma holders and lab assistants who earn a take-home salary of Shs 800,000 and yet many of his colleagues went back to study when Makerere University started degree courses in 1998 followed by Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in 2000.
“Through various industrial actions of the different professionals in the past, government tried to enhance salaries of health workers. When you compare the level of exposure the health workers have and particularly the laboratory professionals, we deal with the disease-carrying agents. We are directly in the attack of these infections. I want to give an example, the lowest salary scale for health workers is U7 in government and that is a certificate holder. Then we have U6, U5 up to U1. For lab assistants at U7, take home Shs 800,000 and then we have the diploma holders who are at U5 take home Shs 1.2 million,” Alibu added.
For him, if degree holders are recognized by accounting officers, then they would be earning around the same as medical officers who are currently earning a gross salary of Shs 3 million and are in industrial action to have their salary enhanced to Shs 5 million.
But, despite this circular being sent out to accounting officers in 2019 to provide for recruitment of degree holders it hasn’t happened. The medical laboratory officials who are in their first-ever industrial action are also asking that their focal persons in local governments be elevated to the same level as district health officers to be able to manage the dynamics of laboratory services that come with the emergence of new pathogens and diseases like the hemorrhagic fevers and COVID-19.
Meanwhile, a sceptical official of Uganda Medical Association who spoke to URN on condition anonymity said that the best that laboratory professionals would have done was to join them in the main industrial action since over the years, whenever salaries of medical doctors were enhanced, they consider all the other cadres across the medical fraternity.
For instance, he says, medical worker recruitment procedures stipulate that medical interns earn half of what their seniors earn. However, the new strike also involves technicians working in blood banks and the six government reference laboratories.
According to statistics by Allied Health Professionals Council, there are about 13,000 registered lab professionals, with 10,000 in active service.
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