Medical Interns have threatened to carryout a countrywide industrial action starting August 1, 2023, should government fail to remit their allowance arrears amounting to over Ugx 101Bn as earlier promised by the Ministry of Financial Planning and Economic Development, during the National budget reading for the Financial year 2023/24.

The remarks were made by Dr Herbert Luswata, the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) Secretary, while addressing the press on Sunday, July 16, 2023 at Mulago Guest house.

He said that the medical interns have given government an ultimatum of 14 days to have their issues sorted, among which are nondeployment of interns and nonpayment of their arrears, or an industrial action begins.

“The continued nondeployment of medical interns up to now, leaves us with no choice but to reactivate a nationwide industrial action involving all medical cadres starting on 1st August 2023, guided by the recommendation of an extra general assembly of UMA held on 10th June 2023.

“We request the Ministry of Finance to act on their promise and provide funds for the deployment and the payment of allowances for medical interns and Senior House Officers (SHOs) as directed by Cabinet before the date of the 1st of August 2023,” he said.

Dr. Luswata noted that, irrespective of the different discussions in Parliament and Cabinet meetings to have the medical interns deployed and their allowances paid as well as that of SHOs, the Ministry of Finance has not responded.

He added that during the budget speech, the Ministry of Finance promised to provide Ugx 22Bn to have the interns and SHOs’ arrears for April 2022 to April 2023 cleared.

“Ministry of Finance in the budget speech provided 22bn to pay arrears for SHOs and medical interns of the previous years (April 2022-April 2023) which we greatly appreciated,” Dr. Luswata added.

Luswata said that the Minister of Finance had as well promised to have the deployment of 1,901 new interns that had completed in 2022, sorted but it has taken a month but up to now, no funds have been dispersed for their deployment.

“The Honourable Minister of Finance promised that he would sort the issue of deployment of 1901 new interns who completed in 2022 ‘in a few weeks’ time’. However it has been a month now and they have not received any actual confirmation of funds or disbursement of these funds from Ministry of Finance for the deployment,” he said.

He revealed that Members from UMA have had meetings the Health Committee in Parliament and of recent with the Minister of Finance to check on the progress with the medical interns’ deployment which Minister promised to provide information in a week, though to date, no response to the same.

Dr. Luswata noted that the graduated medical doctors, pharmacists and nurses have continued to stay at home after graduating from medical school with some of them having stayed at home for a full one year already due to lack of practicing licenses.

The issues of medical interns rotating around deployment and payment has been on for some time and some have been seen demonstrating on the streets of Kampala with the recent one being last month. Their issue is still in limbo as government has not yet sorted them out.

The question remains whether by August 2023, the government will have sorted them out. Medical Interns have helped to bridge the gap in the medical sector in terms of human resource and work load.