Francistown High Court judge Gaopalelwe Ketlogetswe has issued a default judgment against the Government of Botswana ordering that the Institution of Health Sciences lecturers be paid all the overtime allowances they are owed within 60 days.
The default judgment was confirmed by the lecturers’ attorney, Walter David Ditiro, on Friday.
Ditiro also said that they are to be paid retrospectively to the time the order of payment was first issued close to a year ago.
Asked how he feels after the judgment, Ditiro said that he was happy to have obtained the order against the government and that he hopes his clients who have been waiting for close to a year now will finally be paid what is due to them.
“My only hope is that this time around, my clients will be paid as the Court has ordered by issuing a default judgment against the government,” he said.
Asked what difference the current judgment makes as compared to the first one which was not acted upon on time, Ditiro explained that if the lecturers were not paid after 60 days, then they can move an application for contempt of Court.
Recently, the Deputy Attorney General, Morulaganyi Chamme, confirmed that they were dealing with the case in order to pay the lecturers as the Court had ordered.
But he admitted that a long time had passed since the order was issued, saying that the reason for the delay was that it involved a lot of lecturers who have been employed at different times and promised that the process will be speeded up so that the lecturers are paid.
The lecturers’ main argument in the matter had been that they should be paid overtime allowances just like the other nurses working in hospitals and clinics but the government had felt they were not entitled to overtime allowances as they were now lecturing and not practicing nursing.
The Court ruled in favour of nurses.
