MSF quit Bor civil hospital in Jonglei over salary row
By Philip Thon Aleu
April 2, 2008 (BOR, Jonglei) – Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) evacuated its staff, vehicles and other accessories Monday April 1 following a raw between the MSF administration and local employees over salary, a local health worker told Sudan Tribune today at Bor civil hospital.
MSF which is the only NGO supplying health facilities to Jonglei communities, had all staff left for Juba following an alleged statement threatening their lives.
“After the failure of the two parties to reach a positive compromise, the local workers rang to MSF base office in Juba demanding that Bor MSF staff should be serious or “taken back in coffin,” a health worker who requested anonymity, given the sensitivity of the issue, revealed.
All the drugs are left behind and now being used by local staff, running the hospital for the main time, but whose effort is likely to be out completed by the large volume of patients.
MSF had conditioned local thirty (30) health workers, whose contract expired last month, to choose between government payment or MSF’s. The health workers, in response, preferred government salary on condition that a two month salary from the MSF (out of the contract) is paid and topped up by what they calls ” two years compensation allowances” claiming they were not informed ahead of time.
State government in February demanded that all employees should not be dual workers, the trend MSF seems to have used to screen its workers. Some eighty (80) health workers receive salary from the state government and MSF at a go, a source close to the state health ministry revealed.
It is not the first time Bor civil hospital, at the control of MSF, face such life threats. MSF staff (a Kenyan national) was arrested by police in March 2007 at a bar-hole drilling site in Bor town and released 24 hours later without clear explanation concerning his arrest.
Lately that year, a tribal mob broke into the MSF compound here in November, killing four patients. All these acts, the state government says, are unacceptable and partners were immediately brought to books.
MSF supplies drugs, pay both local and international staff, renovated Bor civil hospital in theyear 2007 and improved water system at the hospital. Their absence, if not properly check, may lead to diverse suffering of the local communities in Jonglei state.
It is however, unclear whether MSF quit the hospital in order to allow interrogation of its staff in Juba and return or it has open the case with state government before it left. State minister of health is reportedly out of the state for an official visit to Juba and thus won’t be reached for comments.
(ST)