If the government doesn’t raise the doctors’ salary, the doctors’ supervisors have threatened to go on strike the following Tuesday.
Due to their increasing workload, the 350 doctors who are classified as Medical Officers Special Grade (MOSG) are requesting a raise in pay from Shs6 million per month to Shs11 million per month.
Senior House Officers (SHOs) are licensed medical practitioners who are gaining advanced training at the graduate level under the guidance of MOSGs.
Because the ministry has failed to pay the SHOs’ allowances for the past six months, they have been on strike since Monday.
Dr Herbert Luswata, secretary general of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA), told the media in Kampala yesterday that the amount of work specialists undertake cannot be discounted to the point of paying them the amount of money they already earn.
“The difference in salary between the MOSG and a consultant is a whopping 102 percent and yet the two categories of specialist doctors have similar minimum qualifications and the only difference being the number of years in service (usually a minimum of three years as MOSG needed to become a consultant),” Dr Luswata said.
According to UMA, a medical officer currently earns Shs5 million, a MOSG earns Shs6 million, and a medical consultant receives Shs12 million each month.
An MOSG was earning roughly Shs4.5 million per month before President Museveni proposed wage increases for medical workers.
Currently, SHOs and medical interns, who carry approximately 70% of the workload in public facilities, are either partially available or not deployed, according to the Uganda Medical Association (UMA).
According to Dr. Luswata, the government should give Shs21 billion in the extra budget for interns and SHOs allowances in the fiscal year 2023/2024 to resolve compensation inequities for MOSGs and medical interns.
Furthermore, the UMA secretary general requested that the names of MOSG be changed to associate consultants.