‘We have been used like syringes or condoms’: nurses march in Gauteng, claiming exploitation

Pretoria - The Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu) will be marching to offices of the Gauteng Department of Health, and will also head to the office of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi today to demand “an end to the exploitation” of health workers.

The union is also demanding that all nurses who were hired during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic be absorbed as permanent employees in order to counter the endemic staff shortages at public health facilities.

Speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika on Monday morning, Haitu general secretary Lerato Mthunzi said health-care workers, who were at the forefront of South Africa’s gruesome fight against Covid-19, felt forgotten.

“Health-care workers have been really used. For the lack of a better analogy, we have seen health-care workers being used like syringes, if not worse, like condoms, and when they are done with, they are discarded. That is exactly what we are marching about today,” said Mthunzi.

“We are marching because the exploitation cannot continue on our watch. Someone must say something and this need to get the attention it deserves.”

Haitu will be joined by Independent Liberation and Allied Workers Union.

“It is Human Rights Month and yet this government continuously violates rights and the dignity of workers every single day in this country, by refusing to give expression to the Labour Relations Act which explicitly states that workers cannot be exploited through temporary contracts, or through labour brokers for more than three months,” she said.

“We have a massive shortage of nurses and health-care 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.

“Our government has turned a deaf ear to the suffering of communities and workers, and it continues to abuse this system, which does not improve services in any way for the public,” said Mthunzi.

Haitu’s list of demands include:

* The permanent employment of all contract workers who are threatened with termination at the end of the financial year, and the recall of all contract workers which were “senselessly” discarded in 2022.

* The permanent employment of all agency workers who the Gauteng Department of Health “abruptly, and without notice” ended in February 2023.

* The absorption of Expanded Public Works Programme workers so they can be made permanent. Most of them have been exploited for more than 15 years on this programme yet deliberately excluded from permanent employment. The services offered by the groups of workers are required all the time, and yet they are placed on temporary contracts. “This is an abuse of their rights.”

* The immediate compliance and enforcement of the circular instructing all health facilities to absorb community service nurses and interns, without fail.

Haitu also alleged that there was an unprecedented exodus of senior managers in Gauteng, while others were settling for junior positions.

“We demand an investigation of the unprecedented exodus of senior managers in the Gauteng Department of Health and some settling for junior positions instead of continuing to serve at the helm of Gauteng, and ensuring filling of the posts is done in accordance with the selection and recruitment process and not the disgraceful ‘buddy-buddy’ system which we frown upon,” said Mthunzi.

IOL