Nurses march on Gauteng health

Nurses protesting in Durban in 2018
Photo: Zanele Zulu. 02/10/2018

Nurses march on Gauteng health department over non-payment

Some nurses from the national government training programme have allegedly not been receiving a salary for the last six months.

Nurses march on Gauteng health

Nurses protesting in Durban in 2018
Photo: Zanele Zulu. 02/10/2018

Members of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, representing around 600 nurses who apparently have not been paid for up to six months, marched to the headquarters of the Gauteng health department in downtown Johannesburg to lodge their grievance.

Disappointingly, reports suggest that they were left outside for over an hour before anyone would see them, and even then it was only because they refused to leave.

“I think when we come to the department of health we are coming to the home of our employer and we expect to be treated with respect when we come here,” leader of the group Markos Khensani said, according to IOL.

Government nurse training programme

It is only a specific group of nurses that are affected, those who are coming through the system via government’s own nursing programme.

The way it is supposed to work is for the nurses to receive a stipend while training for four years whereafter they are given salaried placements as community service nurses for 12 months before they are considered fully qualified.

However, there has been a bit of glitch in the system and the nurses are not being paid salaries after being given a community service nurse position, even six or seven months down the line.

They do still seem to be receiving their stipends, though, so they at least have something to live off in the meantime, even if it isn’t much for what is considered a full-time, salaried position.

Not the first time this has happened

Shockingly, it appears that this isn’t even the first batch of graduates this has happened to.

“Are we supposed to do this each and every year? It is not fair. It’s not fair,” said Joy Monaledi, one of the nurses.

Head of the Gauteng health department Professor Mkhululi Lukhele admitted he was disappointed to hear the nurses had not been upgraded to the proper level.

“It is unfortunate that these particular students were not translated to that level where they were supposed to be translated,” he said.

“The directive of the statutory framework is that they should be translated. Certainly, from the HOD point of view, they should be translated.”

However, he offered very little by way of explanation about why this happened, or why it has happened in previous years and not been corrected, or why the nurses have been complaining about it for six months and he apparently had not heard about it until now.

So his disappointment does ring a little hollow.