About 700 nurses in Papua New Guinea walked off the job yesterday, despite their union's announcement that a stop-work meeting had been called off.
The newspaper, The National, reports that nurses in the capital, Port Moresby, Alotau and Mendi said they went ahead with the walkout because they had not heard from their union executives.
A spokesperson for the nurses association's Port Moresby branch, Rosemary Bates, says it was the nurses' decision to carry on with the industrial action.
The union said the nurses were due to return to work today.
The association initially planned to strike because nurses around the country were not being paid, but it agreed to return to talks with the government.
