Johnathan Paoli
THE Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu) will be marching to the Limpopo Department of Health on Friday to demand that the MEC of Health, Dr. Phophi Ramathuba, stop sabotaging healthcare services in the province, and fill all outstanding vacancies.
This follows an announcement in March this year where Ramathuba said all clinics would operate on a 24-hour basis.
The union is particularly interested in finding out how this is going to be achieved considering the fact that the province keeps terminating contracts, and has failed to fill outstanding vacancies.
Haitu also highlighted the massive staff shortages in all hospitals and clinics and said this contributes to very long queues, frustration which leads to dissatisfaction and abuse on workers.
This year the department terminated 706 nursing posts in the province, which has worsened service delivery, whilst at the same time, failing to fill 1 200 vacant posts.
“The very same MEC will be attacking and blaming nurses for poor service, when it is the department that is failing. Workers are scapegoated for deliberate decisions taken by the health department to sabotage healthcare.
“We will also demand an end to the rampant exploitation of workers in the clinics and hospitals. The Limpopo department of health is failing to solve this crisis and it is resulting in poor services being rendered to the community.”
A memorandum will be handed over regarding two main issues, namely a demand that the department stop exploiting Covid-19 health care workers and transform their contracts to permanent contracts, in addition to filling all vacancies.
Inside Politics
