Johannesburg - The Gauteng Department of Health has confirmed that it is working towards permanently employing all its long-term security contract workers.
This comes after members of the health unions belonging to the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Union (Haitu) and Independent Liberation and Allied Workers Union (ILAWU) marched to the provincial Health Department on Monday.
The unions' memorandum of demands tabled their list of demands which included the insourcing of security workers, nurses and the Covid-19 contract workers, some of whom were languishing at home after their contracts were put on hold.
In a statement issued shortly after the march on Tuesday, the Department of Health said it would be attending to some of the demands made and was in the process of resolving some of the matters raised in the memorandum.
The spokesperson for the department, Motalatale Modiba, said the health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko had lamented the delays in resolving some of the long-standing issues affecting employees of the department.
Modiba said the MEC had already stated her concerns regarding many of these matters during her oral responses at this week’s sitting of the Gauteng Legislature.
“She indicated that while the department is currently in the process of advertising a new tender which is anticipated to be awarded early in the new financial year of the 2023/2024, the current situation is unacceptable as the department is spending over R59 million on month-to-month security contracts as its facilities,” Modiba said.
“The security contracts are rolled over irregularly as there is currently no contract in place. Only service level agreements are used to manage the contracts,” Nkomo-Ralehoko said.
The union, through its chairperson, Bafana Tshabalala, said the province has a big shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers, which was affecting service delivery across the province’s healthcare facilities.
“We have a massive shortage of nurses and healthcare workers. Patients in public clinics and hospitals are turned away every single day because of this critical shortage of staff, which has a direct impact on access to health care services, which is a basic human right,” Tshabalala said.
The Star