Union demands workers’ money before QMMH shake-up

Union demands workers’ money before QMMH shake-up
…gives hospital and Health Ministry five working days to explain restructuring
Mohloai Mpesi
THE Lesotho Workers Association (LEWA) has demanded that the government settle what Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) employees are still owed from the Tšepong era before it proceeds with a restructuring of the country’s national referral hospital.
In a strongly worded letter to the hospital’s managing director dated 15 September 2026, the union says the restructuring announced by management this month cannot be allowed to “sideline or postpone” legitimate outstanding claims arising from the years staff worked under the Tšepong Consortium, the Netcare-led private operator whose contract the government terminated in 2021.
The union, which is the recognised representative of QMMH employees, says the restructuring discussion is proceeding without any clarity on those obligations, even though the affected workers served the hospital for roughly five years under the private arrangement. It has given QMMH and the Ministry of Health five working days from receipt of the letter to respond in writing, and has demanded that no decision affecting salaries, benefits or other conditions of service be implemented in the meantime.
LEWA also wants to know whether the restructuring will restore benefits employees lost after the government takeover, singling out the medical allowance and the 13th cheque.
The letter, signed by LEWA general secretary Hlalefang Seoaholimo, was copied to the Minister of Health, the ministry’s principal secretary and its legal director. It responds to a memorandum issued by the QMMH managing director on 9 September, which told staff that a hospital-wide audit led by the Office of the Auditor-General was underway and that the Ministry of Health would lead a restructuring exercise for QMMH on a date still to be announced.
That memorandum urged employees to cooperate fully with the audit team, to make records and documentation available, and to remain “cooperative, professional and attentive to official communication”.
Mr Seoaholimo says the memo raises more questions than it answers.
The union’s first and most fundamental objection is that the Ministry of Health is not the employer. QMMH employees hold contracts with the hospital, not with the ministry, and LEWA wants the ministry to state the statutory or contractual authority under which it proposes to restructure those employees, and whether it is acting as employer, shareholder, principal, regulator or policy authority.
“This distinction is critical and cannot simply be assumed away by referring to a ‘Ministry-led’ restructuring exercise,” Mr Seoaholimo writes.
He further wants confirmation that QMMH, as the employer, remains responsible for all employment decisions concerning its staff, and clarity on how far the ministry’s authority extends over their pay and conditions.
The letter’s second thrust is that the memo says nothing about what restructuring actually means for employees. LEWA lists basic salaries, salary scales, annual increments, allowances, the medical allowance, the 13th cheque, leave benefits, provident fund arrangements, overtime, and shift and night-duty arrangements as matters left entirely unexplained. Workers, it argues, are entitled to know whether the exercise is intended to increase, maintain or reduce what they currently earn.
The union demands an unequivocal answer on that point, including whether a new salary structure is planned and, if so, disclosure of the proposed scales, grades and benefits to the union before any implementation.
Underlying the pay question is a larger one about which system QMMH staff will ultimately fall under. Mr Seoaholimo says employees have a legitimate interest in knowing whether the restructuring will restore the practice under Tšepong, where salary adjustments were considered against private-sector remuneration and conditions rather than government pay structures. Should the ministry intend to move QMMH staff from a private-sector framework into a government-based one, he says, the legal and contractual basis for such a fundamental change must be disclosed and properly negotiated.
LEWA’s third line of attack is procedural. It says there was no meaningful consultation with the recognised union before the announcement, and it is blunt that a general memorandum to staff does not amount to consultation or collective bargaining. It wants to know when the decision to restructure was taken, who took it, whether QMMH itself was consulted, and what consultation process is intended before implementation.
The union invokes a signed collective agreement between QMMH and LEWA, arguing that no restructuring may be used to alter, circumvent, suspend or undermine rights already agreed at the bargaining table. It points to the Labour Act 2024, which requires an employer to bargain in good faith with a representative union and makes failure to do so an unfair labour practice, and which gives collective agreements legal effect and precedence over individual employment contracts.
On the audit, LEWA says it has no objection to lawful scrutiny and encourages accountability, but insists that an audit and a restructuring are separate matters. The existence of an audit, it argues, does not by itself answer the contractual and labour-law questions raised by any variation of employees’ terms. Where audit recommendations touch on pay or conditions, the union wants them disclosed to it and subjected to consultation.
The letter ends with twelve questions, among them what legal authority the ministry has to lead the exercise, whether salaries will rise, hold or fall, what becomes of the collective agreement, and whether any restructuring proposal, report, salary structure, grading structure or implementation plan has already been drawn up and when it will be shared with the union.
Mr Seoaholimo says LEWA is not opposed to a genuine restructuring, but is firmly opposed to any process that bypasses the union, disregards the collective agreement, unilaterally alters conditions of service, imposes government employment conditions without establishing the legal basis for doing so, or retrospectively justifies decisions already taken. Failing a satisfactory response, the union reserves the right to pursue all remedies available in law.
Contacted for comment, Acting Principal Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Health, ‘Matšoanelo Monyobi, said the restructuring had not yet been conducted and that no decisions had been made on the matter.
“The restructuring is yet to be conducted. It has not yet been made. We are yet to look deeply into these matters. There is nothing definite right now to say that this or that is going to happen. The restructuring is yet to be made,” she said.
A hospital under scrutiny
QMMH opened in October 2011 as Lesotho’s 425-bed national referral hospital under an 18-year public-private partnership signed in 2008 between the government and Tšepong, in which Netcare held 40 percent. Initially praised internationally as a model for financing health infrastructure in Africa, the deal was later condemned at home for swallowing an outsized share of the national health budget. The government terminated it early in 2021, after a dispute over fees and a bruising nurses’ strike, and took direct control of the hospital and its filter clinics in August that year.
The hospital has been in trouble almost continuously since. Acting Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health ‘Matšoanelo Monyobi told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in July that government had inherited Tšepong’s governance and pay systems wholesale and never changed them. Ms Monyobi said the ministry had drawn up terms of reference for a restructuring, sought technical assistance from the World Health Organisation, and written to the Auditor-General, with both the audit and the restructuring expected to be completed by October.
The PAC has vowed to block further funding for QMMH until its governance and salary structures are overhauled, complaining that it has yet to receive the hospital’s organogram, salary scales and establishment list. Its chairperson, ‘Machabana Lemphane-Letsie, has said provident fund contributions for QMMH staff went unpaid for years, and the committee has heard evidence of ghost workers on the payroll and irregular procurement. Managing Director Dr ‘Makhoase Ranyali and her deputy, Thenjiwe Dlangamandla, are contesting the committee’s jurisdiction in the Court of Appeal after losing in the Constitutional Court in June.
The question of money owed to workers is already before the same committee. In July it resolved to seek to block payment of a M237.94 million liability claimed by Netcare arising from the 2021 termination until retired QMMH employees receive outstanding severance and provident fund benefits. Former Tšepong staff told the committee they had been promised “transition money” for their years under the consortium and never received it.
It is that unfinished business the union is now insisting be settled before anyone is restructured.