Home until July 2023 There is a reason for that – Health PS

M– Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Dr Simon Zwane has said there were a lot of considerations which were applied in making the decision to place the resumption of the internship programme next year.

Zwane confirmed that the ministry indeed suggested the July 2023 date for the new internship programme.

“There is a group whose internship contract is coming to an end in July 2023 but,

unanimously took a decision to terminate their internship programme.

Government had terminated their 24 month mandatory internship programme (MIP) which every doctor has to go through to be granted a licence by the Eswatini Medical and Dental Council (EMDC) as a prerequisite in practicing medicine within the jurisdiction of that certain country.

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These are doctors who have graduated from Medical Universities in countries like South Africa, Cuba, Botswana, Ukraine and China.

This is excluding the medical doctors who have been trained in Taiwan as they are receiving a E10 000 cushion salary during their internship programme.

About 54 local medical doctors who had enrolled for the mandatory internship programme said they had been however, with the labour irregularities and complaints surrounding the whole internship programme, it is very wise to totally abolish the whole conditions of the current programme and create a new one with no irregularities at all,” Dr Zwane clarified.

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The PS, however, allayed fears and said that the resumption date might be earlier than that in case there are provisions which will suffice from government.

languishing at home for the past three years and efforts to address their situation to the Ministry of Health have been unsuccessful.

The ministry said the decision to suspend and restructure the whole internship programme was the numerous discrepancies which created division among the doctors.

The PS had revealed that all along the programme was going smoothly until a law was passed, whereby every doctor was supposed to do his or her internship in the country of origin.

Worth noting is that previously doctors had been able to enrol in any country of their choice so to be granted the licence to practise.

Because of this new law, Dr Zwane said more doctors came home and expecting to be enrolled in an internship programme expediently and it then became difficult to

Students, in particular, in tertiary institutions have had a difficult task in continuing with their studies as government has delayed either scholarships to the students or the tuitions.

Most recently, government acknowledged that she would settle the E15 million which is owed to the University of Botswana.

Students in Botswana, due to the delay of the payment of their tuition, had been driven out of campus at some point in time.

continue with it due to budgetary constraints.

Due to budgetary constraints, Dr Zwane pointed out that the remuneration of the doctors enrolled in the internship programme resulted in anomalies as some were paid E8 000 while others received E22 000.

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He noted that the matter got worse when the first group challenged government in court and eventually won at the Conciliation Medium and Arbitration Commission (CMAC).

Due to these challenges, he disclosed that as a ministry they were forced to suspend the whole internship programme as if they proceeded, government would have incurred more losses through lawsuits.

However, Dr Zwane promised the doctors that their internship programme would be back soon.