Lerato Mbhiza
Health Minister Joe Phaahla has announced that his Department and Treasury have found the solution to the crisis of unemployed doctors who are willing to work in the public service.
About 1 000 unemployed South African doctors have taken to social media to air their plight where they said the government is failing to give them job opportunities although there is a dire shortage of doctors in public health services.
Initially Phaahla said there were vacancies but there was no budget allocated. However, during the recent debate on the State of the Nation Address (Sona) in Cape Town Phaahla announced that the government may have a solution to have all the unemployed health professionals absorbed in the public sector by April .
Government is working tirelessly to ensure that unemployed doctors who want to join the public service are placed by 1 April this year, said Phaahla
“I am, therefore, happy to announce that working with the Minister of Finance we have a solution to address the current challenge of doctors who want to stay in the public service but could not be offered funded posts,” said the Minister.
During the debate, Phaahla said the Finance Minister will flesh out more details during his Budget Speech next week on how these posts will be funded.
“Our national team is working with the National Treasury team to thrash out the details and working with provincial health departments to speed up the process so that by 1st April 2024 all those who will not be already in posts can be able to start.”
Phaahla said he was confident that some provinces will even be able to start giving out appointment letters before 1 April 2024.
“The measures we are working on with the Minister of Finance will give us sufficient breathing space while we are working on long-term solutions.”
He told Parliament that over the last 15 years, the government has ramped up the training of doctors both in the local universities and the Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro programme in Cuba.
The number of graduates, according to Phaahla, has almost doubled over the last 10 years, from 1 338 graduates who entered the internship programme in 2014 to 2 210 this year.
“The medical profession is very key in the multidisciplinary teams and that is why we are doing everything to retain as many doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and other members of the teams in the public health system.”
In addition, he said his department was committed to working with the medical association and the trade union to look at more opportunities for doctors including offering primary health services in the community as the State prepares to implement the National Health Insurance (NHI).
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