info ; MSF quit Bor civil hospital

[Jean-Francois Darcq]

MSF quit Bor civil hospital in Jonglei over salary row



Thursday 3 April 2008 03:00.




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)