Mozambique: Dismissed Vilankulo teachers appeal to the Inhambane Administrative Tribunal
Health Ministry backs down in dispute with students
3:19 CAT | 25 Feb 2018
The Mozambican Ministry of Health has backed down in its dispute over paying allowances to final year medical students during their internships in health units.
The right to an allowance is established in a government decree of 2004. That decree states that interns should be paid an allowance equivalent to 80 per cent of the starting wage of a doctor, plus a series of other bonuses. This means that each intern should now receive a monthly allowance of 37,000 meticais (about 607 US dollars).
Although this decree has never been revoked, the national director of human resources in the Ministry, Norton Pinto, sent a note to the Medical Faculty of Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, claiming that the Ministry does not have the money to pay for the interns.
This decision affected about 180 final year students from public universities who should be doing internships, which are an obligatory part of the medical course, without which the students will not receive their degrees. Nonetheless, students from the UEM threatened to boycott the internships, unless the allowance was restored.
According to a report in Friday’s issue of the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, the allowance has indeed been restored, but the Ministry insists that this change of heart has nothing to do with the students’ protests.
A source in the Ministry claimed that the real reason for paying the allowance was that successful negotiations with the Ministry of Economy and Finance led to more money being released.
“There was no way the Ministry was under pressure because of the refusal of the students to do their internships”, said the source. “On the contrary, resistance would prejudice the students, since a student who did not do his internship would not finish his course”.
The source brushed aside the work done by interns as an irrelevance, claiming “The National Health Service is supported by professional and experienced doctors and not by interns. They are mere auxiliaries”.
He pointed out that the health units also receive interns from private universities, who never received any allowance from the state.
The source insisted that the student protests, echoed in the media, and given moral support by the Order of Doctors, had no impact. “If we paid, it’s because the financial deficit was unblocked”, he declared.
With the allowance restored, the final year students began their internships on Monday.
Source: AIM
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