Nurses fight over uniform subsidy

GAUTENG nurses who have ditched their uniforms over unpaid allowances for over a week now have vowed to continue wearing civilian clothing while on duty.

They said they would continue with their defiance stance until the money promised reflected in their bank accounts.

Simphiwe Gada, provincial chairperson of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA, said this was a result of a broken trust relationship between them and the provincial Department of Health.

“The department’s move is a knee-jerk reaction to the pressure felt by the nurses opting to stop wearing their uniforms. So we will wait until the money goes into their bank accounts to get back into uniform.”

Gada said although they had seen the process run through and been given assurances that nurses would receive notification of payment by this morning, they would not rush to suspend their protest.

Pinkie Baloyi, deputy director-general for human resources within the department, said payments of uniform allowances had already been processed and would reflect by today.

Baloyi said the delay in the payments of allowances had not affected Gauteng only, and was the result of payments having to go through the National Treasury, which had large amounts to process.

The call for nurses to stop wearing their uniforms as of August 17 was made by the labour union due to the provincial department’s alleged unwillingness to pay nurses’ uniform allowance.

Gada said shortly after the call was made that although other provinces had abided by the 2005 resolution for nurses to be paid, Gauteng ignored this.

He added that the department had gone as far as ignoring a directive from the Public Service and Administration’s Department for it to pay the uniform allowance immediately.

Repeated attempts by the union to get the allowance paid and a further decision by the collective bargaining platform compelling the department to pay had yielded no results, Gada said.