Jayapura. Hundreds of nurses and midwives from Dok II General Hospital in Papua’s capital demonstrated on Tuesday against the provincial government’s failure to come good on promised bonuses worth more than Rp 18 million ($2,000) each.
The rally, which took place outside the provincial legislature, forced the temporary closure of the hospital.
Lenny Ebe, the protest coordinator, said the nurses at the local government-owned hospital had still not been paid the financial incentives owed to them under a 2010 gubernatorial decree.
“The monthly incentives that we were owed throughout last year were never paid,” she said.
“The provincial administration promised last December to hand us all the back pay it owed us, but they still haven’t done it. That’s why we’re demonstrating here.”
Lenny urged the government to pay up immediately in order to prevent a breakdown of the city’s health care system.
“We’re just demanding what is rightfully ours, so the Papua administration must hold up its end of the bargain,” she said.
The central government introduced incentives several years ago to encourage more health workers to take up positions in remote and underdeveloped areas, including Papua.
Under the provincial government’s version of the incentive scheme for Dok II, nurses and midwives at the hospital were supposed to each get an additional Rp 1.5 million a month.
Maria, a nurse who took part in Tuesday’s protest, said that while the gubernatorial decree stipulated they should have been paid by the end of December, the nurses still had not received any of the money.
“We should have gotten the money by December 31, as the provincial administration promised us, but there’s been nothing yet,” she said. “The administration has cheated us.”
The protesters threatened to hold a sit-in at the legislature building until their incentives for the whole of 2010 were paid out and also vowed to disrupt services at the hospital.
“We’ll force the closure of all services at the hospital,” said Delilah Atururi, a midwife. “We’ll turn away all new patients until the administration pays what it owes us.”
She added there were around 800 nurses and midwives at Dok II who had not been paid the Rp 18 million in bonuses they were owed from 2010.
She also said that the protesters would hold another demonstration outside the governor’s office if their demands were not taken seriously.
With the nurses effectively on strike, the hospital appeared paralyzed on Tuesday.
Its emergency ward, normally open 24 hours a day, was closed, while the new patient registration unit was turning away all patients seeking treatment.
Irene Wanggai, a Jayapura resident who came to Dok II’s emergency ward seeking treatment, said she had waited for more than two hours to be served but there were no health workers on duty at the hospital.
“The admin officers told me that the nurses and midwives were away at a demonstration, so all services at the hospital are closed,” she said.
Hospital officials could not say when they expected services to return to normal.