BOFEPUSU, BONU to meet over Nurses’ Day row

FRANCISTOWN: The Botswana Federation of Public Private and Parastatal Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) and Botswana Nurses Union (BONU) will soon meet to discuss the latter’s plans to quit the federation. Yesterday, BOFEPUSU Secretary General, Tobokani Rari said the federation wrote a letter to BONU late last week proposing a meeting at the latest time convenient to both parties. BONU recently made public plans to quit the federation. This follows after the Botswana Land Boards, Local Authorities, Health Workers Union, (BLLAHWU), Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU), and National Amalgamated Local Central Government and Parastatal Workers Union (NALCGPWU) or Manual Workers Union approached court and successfully interdicted the Nurses’ Day celebrations.

The three unions insisted that they were not consulted on the Nurses’ Day celebrations that were supposed to be held on August 25 in Maun. Manual Workers Union and BLLAHWU are also part of BOFEPUSU. The unions that interdicted the celebrations argued that they should be part of the Nurses’ Day activities because some of their members are nurses although their figures are not dominant as it is the case with BONU. Additionally, the fight over organising the Nurses’ Day festivities will soon take shape in court.

“It is important for us to meet with BONU leaders to understand what could have motivated their recent pronouncement that they want to pull out of the federation. We want to understand how we could have aggrieved them. We have written to them proposing a meeting.

We are hopeful that they will positively respond to our letter and the meeting will be soon. It will also be a meeting that we intend to use to smoke the peace pipe if at all they feel we might have aggrieved them,” Rari said.

He added that to the best of his knowledge the federation did nothing wrong and was not privy to issues relating to tensions associated with Nurses’ Day celebrations amongst its three affiliates and BOPEU.

“We were also not part of the litigants to the matter which is why we do know how we might have aggrieved them (BONU),” he said.

Moments after BLLAHWU, BOPEU and Manual Workers Union successfully interdicted the Nurses’ Day the general feeling amongst BONU members was that the federation could have mediated. “We are not going to rest because sister unions have declared a war and this issue is also political. We are going to pull out from BOFEPUSU with immediate effect,” said BONU president, Peter Baleseng in Maun, just after the Nurses’ Day proceedings were interdicted through a court order. Baleseng also said the union will stop its monthly subscription to BOFEPUSU. Despite repeated efforts, there was no readily available comment from BONU with reference to a meeting with BOFEPUSU.