The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (HAITU) in Limpopo has served the department of health in the province with a memorandum of grievances. The union is demanding that scores of contract health workers be permanently placed.
The fairly new health sector union is making its demands clear – that the department of health puts an end to short term contracts.
The union was previously a pressure group, the Young Nurses Indaba. Now, under its new mandate, it represents health workers in general. Its other demands were tabled in a two page memorandum.
HAITU’s deputy president Ramaano Mulatedzi says, “The department must stop the exploitation of workers through the means of short term contracts and employ them permanently. We demand that the Limpopo department of health fills the one thousand two hundred vacant critical care positions that will include 340 posts for nurses, imagine in the ICU.”
The union further adds that about 700 of these short term contracts were unfairly terminated.
HAITU’s general secretary Lerato Mthunzi says, “We are not going to be ruled by people who know nothing about clinical work, that were taken because of they are comrades, that have never touched a patient.”
The Economic Freedom Fighters supports the call by health workers.
EFF’s Capricorn regional chairperson Molatelo Mahladisa says, “We are giving the department a message that before you can go on with the process of hiring 1 200 people, you are going to absorb these 702 first.”
The health department says its request for the funding of additional posts was rejected by the Treasury department, citing various reasons.
Limpopo health department spokesperson Neil Shikwambana explains, “Those 1 200 positions we have written to the department of Treasury to say can you allow us in the 2023/24 financial year to advertise and proceed with the positions and the provincial treasury said we cannot proceed with those kind of appointments. So, that is where we are.”
The short term contracts were mostly drawn for nursing staff, as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic and measles outbreak.
