Strike: the dark story

Strike: the dark story
Written by Mwala Kalaluka and pictures by Thomas Nsama
Sunday, June 14, 2009 4:00:32 PM

THE story of the workers’ strike at Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and other health institutions around the country has many sides to it.

It can be told from the point of view of the nurses who, since last Friday, have been converging on the green in front of the Casualty Department and Cancer Diseases Centre, as part of their strike action. They were in short joining their colleagues around the country that had downed tools earlier.

It can also be narrated through the union leaders that have expressed concern at the snail-paced collective agreement with the government and they are still embroiled in negotiations.

Further, it can be told from the politicians’ side, in their bid to find all manner of reason to urge the striking health workers to return to their stations. Other politicians have even been accused of fuelling the strike at UTH.

But all these vantages, significant as they might be, cannot highlight the ramifications that a strike at the country’s major referral health institutions impose on the delivery of health services to the 12 million Zambians.

The situation prevailing at UTH does not only affect the delivery of health services to Lusaka residents but the entire national populace. The classification of UTH as a primary health facility does not come cheaply or easily.

Apart from being described as very critical, the strike at UTH has set the Ministry of Health’s policy to take health services to as close to the people as possible into leaps and bounds of regression and digression.

For example, how can someone describe a situation where an expectant mother delivers her ‘bundle of joy’ in the open cold in the glare of any passersby? Those from the Western Province would say it is mwila (taboo) to see a woman deliver in the open. This explains the current system where some traditional birth attendants have been trained to compliment midwifery efforts in the countryside, where proper services do not exist.

It is widely held that child delivery and labour ward matters are a God-given preserve of a woman and this very significant aspect of divine-human conventions is one that requires intense dignity.

However, in the dark of the night, due to the strike by health workers, an expectant mother who was taken to the UTH in the throes of labour last Tuesday ended up dangerously giving birth, not only in the open but on the concrete floors, and the newly-born exposed for all to see. Compared to the admired beauty of the Victoria Falls, the above gruesome scenes can be described as sights so gruesome that angels can only frown and sneer on them in their flight.

Imagine the pain, anguish, helplessness and embarrassment that woman suffered. It is a scar of a lifetime on both mother and child and to make matters worse for her the child died halfway out and could that be surprising.

The strike at UTH, no matter how heartless, can no longer be seen from a political rhetoric standpoint, it is in short a social disaster.

Expectant women and mothers were being turned away from clinics due to the strike by health workers and probably UTH was the last resort in their bid to preserve any shred of embarrassment they might have retained after being turned away at such a critical moment in the life cycle.

Against a backdrop of public media press reports that the government had clinched a deal in its negotiations with health workers, an early morning stroll around UTH; a sprawling concrete complex sandwiched between Nationalist and Independence roads, was inevitable last Wednesday to get to the actualities of the strike.

The striking nurses were, as it had been the case over the last few days, on their lawn, ironically dressed in their white uniforms. A few paces away some people were off-loading bodies (BIDs) from an assortment of vans, taking them into the BID Section, which was being manned by two men dressed in purple overalls.

The number of bodies coming from the wards had reduced and reasons for this are going to be subject to another or a set of paragraphs in this article.

UTH public relations manager Pauline Mbangweta said on Wednesday that the situation was still bad and that it had not changed in any way.

The situation was indeed bad, as a sample survey in some of the critical wards would show.

UTH’s Ward E21 is one of the most known places at the institution for other reasons, but on that Wednesday it was devoid of patients; a table was blocking the wide opened entrance.

An approaching cleaner dressed in a blue overall responds to our questions: “There no patients because manpower problems. As you can see we are on strike.”

Further enquiries reveal that patients that were in the 35-bed capacity E21 had been taken to another ward, where they had been combined with other patients from another closed ward. Other patients admitted to E11 and E12 have been transferred to other wards too.

On the surgical side, ward G11 has had most of its patients discharged in view of the insufficient human resource. Some patients, we are told, have even opted for self-discharge against medical advice.

The ward’s sister-in-charge is a very busy woman and one wonders how Florence Nightingale would have felt to see such an overwhelmed nurse, at least Florence had a number of assistances.

From 07:30 to 20:00 hours, the sister-in-charge moves to and fro to make up for the missing personnel.

“The patients are being discharged at the entry point at Phase Five,” we gather from the skeleton workforce. “The sister-in-charges are working from 07:30 to 20:00 hours. We have to wait for the student nurses to come and then we do the hand-over.”

As a matter of fact, student nurses from several training schools around Lusaka are everywhere in the wards.

“The doctors have been told to minimize admissions,” we are told. “We had a few against medical advice just leaving the ward on their own.”

On that day there were 25 people admitted in the ward compared to the previous day’s number of 6.

Across at the Pediatrics Department, several wards have been closed and patients distributed in other wards. Ward A02 High Cost is a classical example and a check there finds two cleaners having a seemingly easy task of cleaning a ward with only one patient.

Back at the Casualty Department lawn, the nurses do not seem eager to get back to work on grounds that their litany of demands on the government had not been met.

Some even dare the government that they just want their demands met and not nonsense.

On the side, a woman’s wails over a lost beloved one punctuate the atmosphere and ahead a visibly sick woman struggles to walk towards the minibus rank outside the hospital. Other patients are making the worst of their situation on the benches that line the Out-Patient Department. Some people are seen leading patients back to the minibus station.

“We have been told that our case is not serious,” says one of them.

The significance of UTH to Zambia, despite its current status, can best be illustrated in the conversation shared with a woman from one of the villages on the Mumbwa-Landless Corner road.

On a minibus from Mumbwa to Lusaka last Tuesday evening the woman narrates how she had to sell some bananas in Mumbwa to raise transport money to travel to the city to tend to her sick daughter admitted to UTH.

The old woman, who raised about K40,000 for her bus fare and was headed to a place beyond Kanyama Compound’s Mutandabantu area said she was not sure that she would find her daughter, who stays in Matero, alive.

“They informed me late and they just told me that I had to find money to travel to Lusaka. That is why I started selling the bananas and the ones that remained I have come with them,” the old woman said. “I only hope that she is still alive but I am not sure.”

Whatever state she found her daughter in, the point here talks volumes why a downing of tools at UTH or indeed any other major hospital affects the social-economic aspect of the country.

It can only be trivialised to the detriment of the powers that be and as the case is at the moment, it has even gone beyond UTH; the strike has become a spreading cancer.

Last week, civil servants from four ministries in Lusaka resolved to go on strike in protest against the 15 per cent salary increment awarded to them this year.

During a meeting held at Mulungushi House, which houses the head offices for the Ministries of Agriculture and Lands, the civil servant went into an uproar when Civil Servant and Allied Workers Union Mulungushi Branch chairperson Uswense Tembo announced that the government had awarded them a 15 per cent salary increment across the board.

Last year’s salary increment was 16 per cent.

Union officials had a tough time to calm down the civil servants who shouted even the more.

In North-Western Province, civil servants also joined the strike and this was in a move to join the health workers that had been at it since last Monday.

CSAWUZ provincial secretary Kennedy Musipelo said it was just student nurses working in clinics.

Southern Province has also not been spared by the strike wave by the civil servants and health workers.

A check in Choma on Tuesday found that operations in most government ministries and departments remained paralysed owing to the on-going work stoppage by unionised public service workers.

Nurses, teachers and other civil servants had downed tools to pressure the government to award them a 25 per cent salary increment across the board.

In Choma, for example, the district commissioner Laiven Apuleni said only emergencies were being attended to at Choma General Hospital, due to the strike action by the nurses and other support staff.

CSAWUZ Choma Branch secretary Peter Phiri said his members would not resume work until the government meets their demands.

These are sentiments being made amidst threats by Southern Province permanent secretary Darius Hakayobe that public workers who would not report back for work would have disciplinary measures meted against them.

However, this tirade of disciplinary threats seems to have fallen on deaf ears on the public workers in the province.

Police in Livingstone last Monday even went further and granted a permit to teachers to hold a peaceful demonstration dubbed Black Wednesday.

At Livingstone General Hospital, acting director Robert Fubisha said each day was unpredictable at the hospital as the nurses’ strike nears 30 days.

During a check at the hospital last Tuesday, only students and Catholic nuns - who are nurses - were attending to patients while clinics in Maramba, Libuyu, Linda and Dambwa townships were closed with only security guards working to protect the property.

It would be appropriate to state here that Livingstone General Hospital is not only for the people of the tourist capital. Patients from as far as Sesheke’s Yeta Hospital, Sichili Mission Hospital in Mulobezi Constituency, Mwandi Mission Hospital and several other hospitals in that belt are mostly referred to Livingstone General Hospital.

Further and beyond, civil servants on the Copperbelt said during a meeting at held in the cafeteria at Ndola Central Hospital maintained that they wanted a block figure of at least K1.5 million across the board salary increment and a minimum housing allowance of K800, 000.

Some nurses even vowed that they would not participate in Child Health Week activities slated for this week if the demands are not honored.

Resident Doctors Association Ndola branch chairperson Dr Bright Nsokolo said medical doctors had resolved to go on strike, as of last Thursday, if workers did not get back to work by the time.

“There is overwhelming work and doctors are not able to deliver health services,” Dr Nsokolo said. “Patients from Luanshya, Kapiri and Mufulira are coming here because there is this perception that Ndola Central Hospital is working at full capacity.”

Copperbelt Province permanent secretary Villie Lombanya has been at the helm in instructing district commissioners to take note of civil servants that were blocking their colleagues willing to work.

Other provinces have equally been gripped or feathered by the public servants’ strike action.

And teachers in several parts of the country have also downed tools demanding improved conditions of service.

On Tuesday, pupils at Lusaka’s Munali Girls emulated some of their colleagues in Kitwe after they ran amok in protest against the government’s failure to make teachers get back to class.

Swift action from riot police diverted the protest by the pupils, who were incensed by the number of days they had stayed without learning because of the persistent strike by the teachers.

But in Chililabombwe, 10 pupils and charged them with riotous behaviour after they rioted in protest against the prolonged strike by the teachers.

The pupils who jammed the roads damaged a vehicle and they were believed to be from Chililabombwe, Muleya and Mutondo high schools.

Chililabombwe Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ) district chairperson Charles Kaonga said it was sad that the government had opted to remain mute over the teachers’ demands, a situation, which he said was likely to breed anarchy in the country.

The Central Province was also not an exception in the strike confusion, pupils from Mukobeko High, Lukanga Basic, Broadway and Bwacha schools rioted over the government’s failure to meet the teachers’ demands. The pupils blocked the road leading to Ngungu and Bwacha townships with logs and rocks, but were only stopped by police, as they attempted to get into the town centre.

Days after this year’s May 1, President Rupiah Banda, who failed to officiate at the virgin Labour Day of his presidency, met labour leaders in the little known Hippo Lodge in the Kafue National Park to hear them out over their concerns.

What is that was discussed at Hippo Lodge that has failed to piece together the plight of the public workers to the shore of positive realisation?

Today at the height of the civil servants’ strike and at the most critical point of the country’s history, President Banda was out of the country again and his officials in the government have continued to engage in banter that has not helped the situation so far.

How far this situation would persist is anybody’s guess.

It is no longer a secret that the strike action by the public workers would have a telling negative effect on the attainment of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the year 2015.

The social sector, which gets the bigger chunk of the national budget, through the health and education have received the biggest beating, as a result of the strike action by health workers and teachers. It is these facets of the social paradigm that will ultimately gauge the country’s strides in the attainment of education for all by 2015 and the reduction in child mortality, which have been a worrisome issue for some time now.

As stated earlier, the government can only trivialise the strike action at its own detriment, because situations such these cannot be transformed into a lifestyle. They are a serious minus on the powers that be and the sooner someone realises the better.