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.
