Image Source: News24
Local – DENOSA Gauteng chairperson Bongani Banda has given the provincial health department until October to address critical nursing shortages, prolonged acting management positions, and failing healthcare infrastructure, warning that members could take to the streets if no action is taken.
Banda said the union’s demands did not come from officials but reflected daily complaints from nurses and healthcare workers on the ground. He said the department had responded with talks rather than action, despite advertisements for executive positions dating back to June that still have not resulted in appointments.
“We are sitting in the very same committee that is expected to execute those posts, they haven’t started as yet, and then the indication today that in June there were advertisements, we are in September now, no implementation as it stands. So we can’t be always talking, talking, talking, talking with no action,” Banda said.
Ignorance And Arrogance from The Department
Prolonged acting appointments at the executive and CEO levels have been a long-standing complaint among healthcare workers, with the recent Tembisa Hospital scandal cited as an example of junior officials being scapegoated while senior leaders implicated in the Special Investigating Unit’s findings escaped accountability.
Banda said the department had shown ignorance and arrogance toward the very workers raising these concerns, and that the failures were not new but had been left unresolved for years.
“If there is no medical equipment that is enough to render the services, you must just know they’re going to suffer. If there are no medicines to render or to give to offer to these patients who are coming daily to these hospitals, they are going to die,” Banda said.
Union Rejects Blame For Potential Strike Action
Concerns have been raised that a nurses’ strike would put patients at risk, with maternity units already dangerously understaffed and, in some cases, as few as four professionals attending to dozens of patients at a time.
Banda pushed back against suggestions that strike action would make DENOSA responsible for any harm to patients, arguing that the health system was already failing to deliver care and that nurses were being blamed for problems caused by the department itself.
“So the systems are on strike at this current moment, and who’s suffering is healthcare workers. So what we are saying is that we are pushing back. We are saying we are going to take it to the streets because the system has already been on strike, and you are always blaming the healthcare workers who are supposed to be the ones that you are with to fight the systems that are failing us from the governance,” Banda said.
Banda said DENOSA would consult its members through October and, should the department fail to complete the promised appointment and infrastructure processes, the union would proceed with strike action.
