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GroundUp reports that almost 100 former nurses at Jubilee District Hospital in Hammanskraal have called on the Gauteng Department of Health to employ them permanently.
Originally contracted in July 2020 to deal with the Covid pandemic, their employment contracts were periodically renewed, but terminated at the end of March 2023. According to the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa), the Gauteng health department was supposed to have given the nurses new contracts for 1 April 2023 to March 2024. The nurses have been sitting outside the hospital since Monday. One of them commented: “They want us to work under agencies, and we don’t want that. This hospital is very understaffed, but they are being stubborn. Inside the wards there are only two nurses working, and they are overstretched. They are struggling but the department doesn’t want to employ more nursing staff.” In a statement on Monday, Denosa said as a result of the cholera outbreak “Jubilee Hospital is now experiencing an influx of patients, which is stretching the facility to breaking point.” The trade union added: “Nurses in the facilities in the area will also be made to perform duties that are outside their scope of practice where they may be expected to carry water buckets to the water tankers. Denosa does not encourage that nurses perform duties that are outside their scope.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Chris Gilili at GroundUp
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page