Nurses get 14% salary increase
Monkagedi Gaothobogwe | Monday March 31, 2014 16:26
This comes after President Ian Khama and his cabinet gave the thumbs up to a long dragging proposal by the union to have nurses paid for non-nursing duties, The Monitor is reliably informed.
Only a directive and savinggram announcing government commitment is currently causing the hold up, but insiders say negotiations between the two parties have been peacefully concluded, and that the savinggram and directive are expected as early as this week.
The impending good news has already filtered to nurses on the ground who are now rubbing their hands in glee. While other unions have been hitting blanks around the table with the employer, it has surfaced that the nurses have been separately and successfully striking a deal with the employer, which will also see supervisors in hospitals as well as lecturers in health institutions from D3-D1 scales receiving 30 percent salary increases. This is meant to cover for overtime allowances and to improve supervision at hospitals and health institutions such as the Institute of Health (HIS) Colleges, The Monitor has confirmed from a well-placed government source.
In fact the 30 percent increase was approved in December but will be effected in April, The Monitor has confirmed.
Over the weekend the BONU president Glan Tshenyego confirmed that negotiations with the employer over nurses increment are at advanced stage and described the issue as top priority. Essentially the 14 percent increment for general duty nurses covers all the more than 10,000 nurses in Botswana since they perform non-nursing duties from time to time.
While the nurses will get 4 percent salary increase like the rest of the public service employees starting end of April, insiders say the nurses will start receiving their 14 and 15 percent increase by June largely due to the fact that government will be spending loads of money paying HIS teachers, and supervisors in hospitals back-pays.
BONU had also proposed that nurses with post basic skills such as midwives get a separate package estimated to be 15 percent salary increment on top of the 14 percent that other nurses are set to get. The BONU president said: “We cannot announce it in the absence of a directive or savinggram; ga e ise e wele, e apeilwe, it is on the table, but right now we don’t yet have formal writing from the employer, just wait a bit, in no time, we will revert to you.”
However, Tshenyego said the employer now seems to appreciate that nurses, unlike other scarce skills have been left behind in scarce skills recognition. “Nurses all over the country are daily compensating for shortage of pharmacists, lab technicians, doctors, psychiatrists, and other rare medical skills”.
However, the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) Secretary General Ketlhalefile Motshegwa on Saturday was not amused to hear that BONU and government have concluded a deal without them.
He wondered how that could happen since public service salaries, including nurses issues are only negotiated at the Bargaining Council. BONU is not a member of BOFEPUSU, after it pulled out of Botswana Landboards, Local Authorities and Health Workers Union (BLLAHWU), to stand on their own.
RESPONSE TO MONITOR – NO 14% WINDFALL
By Jeff Ramsay for Government Communications/>/>Government has noted with concern the appearance in today’s (31/3/14) edition of the Monitor newspaper of a front page news report, published under the banner headline “14% Windfall,” in which it is falsely announced that Government has agreed to a 14% and 30% increment for nurses across the country./>/>While it is true that the Botswana Nurses Union has engaged Government over their desire for an adjustment in their constituents’ conditions of service, no such agreement as reported in the newspaper has been reached./>/>What has already been agreed was the extension of the existing 30% commuted overtime allowance to nurses on the D 1-3 scales./>/>We are therefore compelled to state for the record that there is no factual basis for today’s news report in the Monitor/>In our view such false reports risks giving rise to confusion and mistrust by members of the public.