But BDU on the other hand is unmoved and continues to rally its members to take only one call per month. The two parties early March settled a matter in which DPSM had whisked BDU to court to compel doctors to attend emergency call duties beyond 24 hours in a month. Through a consent order, the two reached consensus and agreed to begin talks. They would start negotiations on May 10 and before the May 20, 2025 deadline, the parties had decided they could not find each other and the matter was thus referred for arbitration. It had also been agreed that whilst the negotiations are ongoing, all BDU members would be attending to emergency calls as rostered. However, once the talks failed, BDU advised its members to revert to doing one call per month.
However, government would not react to the communication by BDU until this week when the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Professor Oatlhokwa Nkomazana wrote a letter to BDU informing it that their members who do only one call in a month would have their 15% commuted overtime and emergency call allowances deducted in loss. "We refer to the ongoing discussions and the agreed-upon path to resolve the impasse concerning emergency call duties for essential service wokers, involving the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM), and the Botswana Doctors Union (BDU). We appreciate the collective efforts made to date, including the mutual consensus to engage independent arbitrators to facilitate a resolution."
