The Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja has lost her cool following the recent tour of the Leader of Opposition (LOP) together with opposition Members of Parliament to different parts of the country paying a courtesy call to several government projects including schools and health facilities. Nabbanja has asked Mpuuga and opposition MPs to stop taking their politics to government hospitals.
“Mpuuga and his opposition MPs should only stop at visiting our (government) hospitals for treatment when they are sick. They should keep politics away from health facilities,” she ordered.
The Prime Minister put it upon Mpuuga for have incited the medics at Kawolo General Hospital to strike saying before his visit there, the situation was so calm.
Nabbanja’s directives follow Mpuuga’s impromptu visits to greater Mukono districts of Mukono, Buikwe, Kayunga and Buvuma as his team also went to Kawolo Hospital. The health workers at Kawolo General Hospital told Mpuuga how they had worked for over three months without pay yet the facility also lacked medicine and other health related requirements.
Dr. Joshua Kiberu, the medical superintendent of Kawolo General Hospital during Mpuuga’s visit expressed his dismay over the government’s inadequate support for the hospital.
Dr. Kiberu highlighted that the hospital’s health workers had been unable to provide proper medical care for the past four months following lack of essential medicine and other medical supplies.
“This is because of the government’s failure to supply necessary medical resources. Consequently, the health workers have been forced to refrain from writing prescriptions for the patients due to lack of stationary in the hospital,” he narrated.
Mpuuga visited the hospital on Thursday last week and on Monday June 12, the medics went on a sit-down strike citing government’s failure to meet their two-month salary arrears. However, on Tuesday the health workers went back to work following several threats from their bosses both at the district and the Ministry of Health.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister Nabbanja in company with the State Minister for Health in charge of General Duties, Hanifa Kawooya and the Minister of State in charge of the Office of the Vice President, Diana Mutasingwa Kagyenyi and other officials visited Kawolo Hospital castigating the health workers’ decision to go on strike without following proper procedures.
Nabbanja asked the Buikwe District Chief Administrative Officer to take disciplinary action to the medics who led the strike.
“From the information I have got, many of the health workers here have over stayed, I direct you to send them to health units which are in rural areas as they have failed to appreciate the advantages of working in a modern facility like this one and in town,” Nabbanja directed.
She also asked National Medical Stores to make sure that they supply Kawolo Hospital with the relevant medicines in order to end the current medicine shortages in the facility. Despite the reasons for their strike being inevitable, the health workers apologized and asked for a pardon.
Mpuuga fires back at Nabbanja
However, the LOP, Mathias Mpuuga has described Nabbanja, the Prime Minister as ‘unserious’, saying; “When I stated on the floor of Parliament that the regime’s Prime Minister is unserious, she took offence, but her actions and statements prove exactly that.”
Mpuuga said that Nabbanja thought she could stop the Leader of Opposition from performing a constitutional mandate since his oversight tour has “exposed the rot and neglect of duty in key social service sectors plus the sheer lack of direction for this tired regime.”
The he claimed that “for months, civil servants have not been paid and the naïve Nabbanja thinks that she can stop the LOP from visiting hospitals because the doctors there will tell me about their missed salaries.”