Judgement in IHS lecturers case in August

Tebogo Kgalemang
Correspondent | Wednesday June 22, 2011 00:00

The lecturers at various branches of IHS in the country want an order declaring that by virtue of their positions in the nursing cadre, they are entitled to 30 percent overtime allowance paid to the other nurses.  They aver that the duties they are assigned by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to train and produce dependable nurses should attract the same allowance as other nurses.

'This is paid to all the nurses employed by MoH and to all the nurses that are trained and produced by us from the institutions,' the lecturers argue. They say that should the court uphold their plea, they should be given back pay from the date that such allowance was due to them. The allowance was introduced on April 1998 under the Directive Number 18.  Dr Victor Mokowe, a senior lecturer at IHS Francistown stated in the founding affidavit that: 'The nurses who are doing lecturing duties are first and foremost nurses and are doing all the duties done by other nurses'. The allowance is supposed to cater for overtime and nurses retention allowance, the applicants argue.

'The fact that one is deployed at IHS does not disqualify one from being paid such an allowance. In all fairness, we are nurses by profession. All the duties that we do are nursing and or nursing related. We train and produce nurses in the wards. Our training of nurses is for the purpose of producing those very nurses who then qualify for the allowance that is denied to us,' the lecturers say.

But Assistant Director at DPSM, Maipelo Ragalase has denied in her affidavit that the applicants are employed as practicing nurses. 'All the 113 applicants are lecturers and not practicing nurses,' she said. 'The allowance is paid only to nurses who hold the rank of senior nursing sister grade one and below,' she explained. She said only practicing nurses in hospitals and local authorities are entitled to the allowance and the lecturers do not fall under any of the categories. She explained that the allowance is not paid as of right to every nurse. Rather only nurses who are expected by virtue of regular night calls over and above normal hours get the allowance.

During cross examination DPSM attorney, David Moloise asked Mokowe whether he would be right to say that he is not employed at the hospital or in a local authority. Mokowe answered in the affirmative but stressed that that he spends much of his time in hospitals teaching students practical.