Bor State Hospital | Credit | Charles Wote/Eye Radio

Health workers at Bor State Hospital have boycotted work due to unpaid two-month incentives.

According to John Anyieth Malaak, a registered nurse and head of the paediatric department, the hospital staff laid down their tools this morning, demanding the payment of July and August incentives.

Malaak, who also chairs the South Sudan Midwives’ Association in Bor, stated that despite a meeting with the state Ministry of Health on August 12th, their concerns have yet to be addressed.

Malaak emphasized that the economic crisis has left health workers with no choice but to lay down their tools to look for other means of survival.

“I am complying with the letter which they sent to the Ministry of Health and Government authorities about the two months’ incentives have not been paid and they have no other means of survival,” said Malaak.

“They tried to implement this message which they put in the document this morning and they laid down the tools. This is what has happened,” he said.

“The hospital has not been functioning properly. It’s only emergencies being seen. And this morning they said they have been waiting for long and there’s nothing tangible being seen.

“The anger is not waiting for anyone.  The anger is continuing as you know the economic crisis. So, when they go back to work, when they go back from work in the evening they get a lot of challenges in the house.

“They say we better lay down our tool and we see if you can get other means of surviving until when the incentive is paid.”

The partial shutdown has significantly paralysed the hospital’s operations, with only emergency cases being attended to.

In response to the situation, Lual Monyluak, the state Minister of Health, clarified that the protesting health workers are government employees and are obliged to work despite the unpaid incentives.

“We talk to them to resume their work because they are not the employees of the incentives.  They are employees of the government.  And with the incentives, it is not the government who pays them,” Minister Lual.

“It is the NGOs who pay them the incentives.  They should work until the incentives come because they are government employees. They are not contracted. They are not being contracted by the NGOs,” he said.

“It is just an incentive paid to the end workers. Not in Jongle alone.  It is over South Sudan.

“The layman is not… And today, the layman is not…  He is all over South Sudan. We talk with them, and they say they will go and make…”

Despite the minister’s appeal, the workers remain adamant saying, they will not return to work until the incentives are paid, citing their survival depends on it.