The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu) says the reason for the high increase in unemployed nurses is a lack of funded vacant posts.
Haitu has called on the Health Department to fill all nursing vacancies at public healthcare institutions.
The union says in recent years, the number of trained nurses in different provinces has dropped from 8000 to less than 100.
Haitu’s General Secretary Lerato Mthunzi says with the majority of aged nurses leaving the system, there is a demand to train more nurses.
“But at the backdrop of that, we do have nurses that have been trained over the years that are struggling to be employed. So nurses will sit at home or will try to defer to other goals, go overseas, even go to private sector, while they were trained for the public sector.”
“So we still got failing of nurses and employment of more nurses into the public sector is quite crucial at this stage,” she adds.
PODCAST | The full interview with Mthunzi:
